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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28470276">Solemnly, freely, and upon my honor</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phia_Karenzia/pseuds/Phia_Karenzia'>Phia_Karenzia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Medical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bing Lee is a doctor and so is everybody else, F/M, Modern Era, basically P&amp;P except they're all doctors in residency, let's just pretend COVID never happened in this universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 01:02:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,744</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28470276</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phia_Karenzia/pseuds/Phia_Karenzia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern/Medical AU. Bing Lee’s a doctor, Darcy’s a doctor, Lizzie’s a doctor, they’re all doctors.</p><p>Basically P&amp;P but, like, a medical drama.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy, Jane Bennet/Bing Lee, Jane Bennet/Charles Bingley, Lizzie Bennet/William Darcy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>140</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>As a member of the medical profession, I solemnly pledge to dedicate my life to the service of humanity…<br/>I make these promises solemnly, freely, and upon my honor.<br/>–WMA Declaration of Geneva</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Meryton assembly and the "accomplished woman" scenes</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It is a truth universally acknowledged that physicians are supposed to be a rational and scientific-minded group, and as such by definition, should be the opposite of superstitious.</p><p>After all, why else would doctors in the late 19<sup>th</sup> century adopt the symbol of the white lab coat as practitioners of evidence-based medicine, if not to delineate themselves from the quacks and snake-oil healers? (Or in modern times, from the morons who believe in antivaxxism or the curative benefits of the paleo diet?)</p><p>Elizabeth Bennet, D.O., PGY-1 family medicine resident at Meryton Community Medical Center, sighs and sips the already cold coffee that Charlotte had set on her desk earlier with a pitying look.</p><p>Anne Debourgh is back in the ED.</p><p>In medical school, Lizzie had never really bought into the whole curse of the Q-word<sup>1</sup> thing. She never said the word aloud, of course, but it was more like an inside joke among those familiar with medical culture. Like how every child knew the floor was lava and you shouldn’t step on cracks.</p><p>But five months after trading in her short derpy student’s jacket for the much more dignified long whitecoat of a Real Actual Doctor, Lizzie is starting to wonder if maybe everyone else is onto something with those superstitions.</p><p>It’s not the Q-word specifically, but after two stints on the inpatient service and night float, she <em>has</em> noticed that a certain subset of their patient population (affectionately dubbed “frequent fliers”) tends to get admitted to the hospital with alarming consistency when their names are spoke aloud.</p><p>It’s like Bloody Mary, except instead of appearing in a mirror, the patients show up on the emergency department board with chief complaints like falling for the fifth time this month (but still refusing to go to rehab), or CHF exacerbation (take your Lasix and maybe you’ll stop having to come in), or “Doc I’m just in so much pain from all this constipation” (yeah, no you’re not getting opioids for that). And then her pager will go off because the ED wants her to come collect her patient, and all the joy is sucked out of Lizzie’s life for the next hour it takes to do an admission.</p><p>(Also, if she has to explain to Anne Debourgh’s mother that essential oils are not going to cure her daughter’s asthma <em>one more time this month</em>, she might actually lose it.)</p><p>For real, though. Inpatient is kicking her butt. She still has all her progress notes to write, and apparently one of their patients on the floor is requesting Flonase in the middle of November, while another one is demanding to leave AMA<sup>2</sup>. The last thing she needs right now is for a certain ED resident who thinks it’s appropriate to call for an admission this close to sign-out to—</p><p>
  <strong>BEEP-BEEP-BEEP, BEEP-BEEP-BEEP</strong>
</p><p>Lizzie groans and silences her shrieking pager before reaching for her desk phone and dialing the number back. “Hi, it’s Lizzie from family med.”</p><p>“Hi Lizzie. This is—” (Oh no. Not him. <em>Fuck</em>.) “—Will Darcy, ED resident. I’ve got one of your patients here in room 34, Anne Debourgh? You’re probably familiar with her. She’s a 16-year-old female with a history of severe persistent asthma…”</p><p>He rattles off a bunch of information that Lizzie probably should be writing down, but in all honesty, she’s just too busy cursing herself for ever being born.</p><hr/><p>The first time Lizzie met Will Darcy, she had been standing on the sidelines of a cornhole match watching the ortho bros demolish their competition with their superior hand-eye coordination.</p><p>The hospital had rented the park across the street for an orientation luncheon, after a long morning going over the boring stuff—hospital policies, insurance, contracts, paperwork. Ostensibly, it was for all the new hires and incoming interns<sup>3</sup>, but upper years were welcome to stop by to socialize, too. And stop by they did, likely lured in by the promised free food. Lizzie had already spotted at least one general surgery senior making the rounds from one group of interns to another, wishing everyone a warm welcome to hell.</p><p>Jane had ditched her for that EM intern (Bing Lee, was it?) they’d met earlier in the day. The guy had intercepted her sister as soon as he arrived with some of his upper years in tow, and from the look on his face as Lizzie watched them chatting away, he was probably halfway in love with her already.</p><p>His sour-faced friend seemed to think so too.</p><p>“Seriously,” Lizzie heard him protesting after Jane left to find the ladies’ room. “Who goes to mandatory fun time and comes out with a <em>date</em>?”</p><p>He’d been lingering on the edges of the party for at least the past half hour, talking only to the other EM residents. He’d probably be cute if he smiled. Not that Lizzie was watching him. It was just hard to miss the Big Not-so-Friendly Giant glaring at everyone like they were personally responsible for his having to work 80 hours a week for barely above minimum wage.</p><p>“It’s like you’re allergic to fun, Darce,” Bing retorted. “You’ve been here, what? A whole year now? And still the only people you know are from EM.”</p><p>“That’s not true! I know Hurst from IM, and Fitz from ortho—”</p><p>“Only because we all went to med school together,” Bing interjected.</p><p>“Yeah? Well, who else here have <em>you</em> talked to besides me and that new peds intern?”</p><p>“Plenty of people! There’s Charlotte from family med, and Ricky the new chaplain, and Jones the pharmacy resident—oh, and Jane’s sister Lizzie, too! Apparently they both matched here by complete coincidence, only Jane is peds and Lizzie is family med.”</p><p>“There’s a pair of twins in the intern class?”</p><p>“Well, no, I think Jane’s at least a year older? She mentioned that she took a gap year before med school, while Lizzie went to a D.O. school straight after college, so they just happened to get into different med schools the same year.”</p><p>Lizzie couldn’t see his face, but Darcy made a sound in response that definitely did not signify pleasure.</p><p>Bing sighed. “Look, Lizzie’s right over there. You should go over and introduce yourself. Ask her to team up with you on cornhole or something.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because you’re both standing around with no one to talk to, and you should be social at a social gathering?”</p><p>“It’s not like we’d have anything to talk about.”</p><p>“It’s called meeting new people and learning about them. You should try it some time.”</p><p>“She’s family med. And a D.O. That’s all I need to know about her.”</p><p>“<em>And</em> she’s Jane’s sister. If things work out with Jane and me, you’ll probably be seeing a lot more of Lizzie.”</p><p>“Well, I don’t plan on it. She's not half as pretty, and I have no intention of third-wheeling on your dates with the sister that no one else is interested in.”</p><p>Lizzie didn’t catch Bing’s response because her new co-intern Charlotte Lu chose that moment to manifest at her side with two cups of lemonade. “Aw chin up, honey. If he liked you, you’d have to talk to him.”</p><p>“To our continued spinsterhood, then,” Lizzie cheered, tapping her cup gently against Charlotte’s.</p><p>Bing did eventually drag his friend over to properly introduce them, and the look that flitted across Snobby Dr. Douchebag’s face was priceless when she said sweetly, “Hi, I’m Lizzie. I’d shake your hand, but I don’t think you’d appreciate catching all my family med D.O. cooties.”</p><hr/><p>Jane is setting the kitchen table when Lizzie finally stumbles into their shared apartment with a groan. “Rough day?”</p><p>“Yeah, sorry I’m late. Had to spend an hour admitting an asthma kid because <em>somebody </em>couldn’t wait another five minutes to page the night team.”</p><p>The <em>somebody</em> in question follows her through the front door, arms weighed down by several plastic bags full of Chinese takeout. “I <em>told</em> you, I’m <em>sorry</em>, I forgot the cutoff was 5:30, not 5:00.”</p><p>“You still suck.”</p><p>“At least I stuck around and drove you home—”</p><p>“I could have walked.”</p><p>“Yeah, but then who would have gone with you to pick up dinner?”</p><p>“You could have gone on your own. It’s not like <em>you</em> were working late.”</p><p>“Oh hey, Will. Lizzie.” Bing waves at them from the kitchen counter where he’s mixing drinks. “My sister was in town and stopped by. I hope you don’t mind her joining us for dinner.”</p><p>Great. Fantastic. It’s bad enough that Lizzie has to endure Darcy’s charming company most of nights of the week, since he apparently has no other friends to make dinner plans with after work. With Jane and Bing too busy making goo-goo eyes at each other, it usually falls to Lizzie to entertain the stick in the mud. But to throw Bing’s awful sister into the mix, too?</p><p>
  <em>“Will!”</em>
</p><p>And there she is, Miss Caroline Lee herself making her grand entrance from the bathroom wrapped in <em>Lizzie’s</em> bathrobe with <em>Lizzie’s</em> towel around her hair, no doubt after borrowing <em>Lizzie’s</em> expensive shampoo. She ignores Lizzie completely and moves to wrap herself around Darcy.</p><p>(Well, at least there’s the satisfaction of watching the Darcy-bot malfunction on contact with water.)</p><p>Tonight, after the guest is properly clothed and the takeout has been passed around among the four regulars (Caroline raided the fridge and threw together a salad for herself, all the while sniffing at the lack of organic produce the Bennet sisters had to offer), the dinner conversation turns largely toward her latest goings-on.</p><p>“So,” Lizzie clears her throat. “Caroline. How’ve you been?”</p><p>“Oh, you know. Busy. Research, volunteer work, interviewing. I’ve got another one coming up tomorrow.”</p><p>Oh, right. Jane had mentioned a while back that Caroline is in her third straight cycle of applying to medical schools, since she’d apparently been rejected by every place she applied the last two years. Lizzie knows she should probably feel bad for her, since that’s an awful lot of time, money, and effort spent on applications. Plus it gets harder and harder to get in with each failed cycle. Schools can see how many times a candidate has previously applied to them, and they want to see what kind of impressive things repeat-applicants have done to better themselves since they last applied.</p><p>Lizzie probably <em>did</em> feel bad for Caroline at some point earlier in their acquaintanceship—but that was before her suggestion that Caroline cast a wider net by applying to osteopathic schools was met by a scoff of “No, I want to be a <em>real</em> doctor. Like my brother and your sister.”</p><p>Well, Lizzie had gone to a D.O. school and still managed to match into a decent residency program at the tender age of 26, so she doesn’t really see Caroline’s point. Better to get into <em>a</em> med school—even if it’s no Hopkins or Harvard—and have a clear path to a real career, than to be the same age and still flailing about because you think it’s beneath you to apply to a safety school. While it’s probably true that having the letters D.O. after one’s name instead of M.D. might make it more difficult to match into a more competitive specialty, it had never been Lizzie’s ambition to become a plastic surgeon or a dermatologist.</p><p>But to each her own, she supposes.</p><p>Come to think of it…Caroline Lee, William Darcy, and her mom would get along swimmingly with their D.O.-bashing. If Jane and Bing ever get married, they should just pack those three guests into the same table to make one insufferable table of the damned. (That would, of course, only work if Bing and Darcy weren’t best friends, since Darcy would realistically be seated with the rest of the wedding party. But a girl can dream.)</p><p>Jane and Bing are off in their own little world on the far end of the table, and Darcy is too busy being unsociable and taciturn despite the slew of compliments Caroline pays him, so Lizzie swallows her lo mein (and her intense dislike for their other unwanted guest) and asks Caroline, “So where are you interviewing at tomorrow?”</p><p>“Meryton U. I know it’s not exactly a top-tier school—no offense, Jane—but I thought about your advice to apply to safety schools, Lizzie, and decided you had a point.”</p><p>“How magnanimous of you.”</p><p>“Of course, this is probably all unnecessary, considering all the accomplishments I’ve put on my application this year. UPenn will practically be begging me to choose them.”</p><p>“Oh yeah!” Bing nods enthusiastically. “Caro’s been really busy lately beefing up her résumé with research, volunteering, and mission trips. I don’t think she’s had time to stay in touch in months—”</p><p>To Lizzie’s surprise, Darcy chooses this moment to break his silence. “You do realize that those are the most common things people list on their applications, right? Everyone does research, but they don’t all get published. Everyone volunteers or goes abroad so they can humble-brag about it in their personal statement. I can count on maybe one hand the number of people I know who actually did anything interesting that got them into med school, let alone residency.”</p><p>“I completely agree with your assessment, Will,” Caroline beams. <em>Damn,</em> but that girl recovers quickly. “Everyone is expected to have some kind of research and volunteering under their belt these days. M.D. schools are a lot more competitive to get into than you might think, Lizzie.”</p><p>“Your unique experiences must have taught you a great deal about what adcoms look for then,” Lizzie fires back. <em>Especially as someone who’s failed to get in anywhere for two years in a row</em>, she wants to add, but Jane shoots her a warning look across the table and mouths <em>Be nice.</em></p><p>The dig goes right over Caroline’s head, though. “They certainly have! To really get an admissions committee’s attention, a worthy candidate has to be accomplished in music, art, sports, and foreign languages. She would ideally have taken a year or two off for graduate school or to gain work experience before applying. <em>And</em> she has to conduct herself well at her interviews, with the way she dresses and carries herself and talks up her accomplishments.”</p><p>“All this is true,” Darcy adds. “And on top of all this, she must have a good GPA, a stellar MCAT score, and glowing letters of recommendation detailing her passion for learning and what a hard worker she is.”</p><p> <em>A whole lot of drivel, then</em>, Lizzie thinks,<em> from someone who still hasn’t mentioned once why she even </em>wants<em> to go into medicine</em>. She wonders if there’s any point in informing the anti-D.O. snobs that she actually scored a 43 on the MCAT—the <em>old</em> MCAT scoring system<sup>4</sup>, since she only needed to take the test once and got into med school on the first try. It’s almost like some people choose to become osteopathic doctors because they (gasp!) <em>want</em> to, and not because D.O.s are for rejects.</p><p>Aloud, she simply says, “It’s no wonder, Darcy, with the circles that you move in, that you only know a handful of accomplished people.”</p><p>Fortunately, Jane (the angel that she is) changes the subject then, and Lizzie is saved from having to endure any more small talk.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>What better way for me to close 2020 than to take a break from doing COVID things and write about our favorite characters doing non-COVID things? Stay safe, everyone, while we kick this trash fire year to the curb.</p><p>Footnotes:<br/>(I don't watch medical dramas because the inaccuracies bother me, so pardon me if something I'm explaining is already known to the wider audience.)<br/>1. Everyone in the medical profession who’s ever worked a night shift knows that if you say "quiet," then your night will be anything but.<br/>2. AMA = against medical advice<br/>3. In medicine, an intern is another name for a first-year resident (aka a PGY-1, aka a post graduate year 1, aka a doctor who has just finished medical school and started residency), not the summer hire who fetches your coffee.<br/>4. The highest score possible on the old MCAT was a 45, with a median score of about 25. They changed the scoring system in 2015, so now the highest possible score is a 528. So if Lizzie applied and got into med school 4 years ago, then she theoretically could have taken the MCAT a year prior to applying, and she would have been one of the last people to take the old version of the test.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Some Bennets backstory. Oh, and Mr. Collins. Lady Catherine and Anne make an appearance but out of order chronologically</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ever since Lizzie and Jane moved out, Dr. Thomas Bennet, PhD, has spent most of his weekends in his laboratory on the fifth floor of the Longbourn building at Meryton University. It was, after all, a lot easier to focus on his work here without Fran constantly interrupting him to complain about the bills piling up. Plus, divorce lawyers are expensive, and raising three daughters on the sole income of an organic chemistry professor had been difficult enough without the added stress from now having to pay alimony to their spendthrift mother. And with the two older daughters finally out of school and earning their own money, and the youngest always spending her weekends with friends, the idea of writing grant proposals at the lab just became more attractive than rattling around alone in a half-empty house.</p><p>Today, however, someone is already sitting in his chair when he arrives at his office.</p><p>“Did you know, Dad,” she says by way of introduction, “that I, a real actual doctor, know less o-chem at this point than your undergrads do, since I haven’t touched this stuff in at least five years? Also, Michael Steward has terrible handwriting, and I’m pretty sure he copied Sarah Butler’s homework verbatim.” She nonchalantly clicks her red pen and moves on to the next stack of papers on his desk.</p><p>“Lizzie, you had better not be failing all my students.”</p><p>“They’re pre-meds. Failing builds character.”</p><p>He presses a quick kiss to the top of his daughter’s head with a chuckle and moves to peer more closely. “Wait—that’s not my answer key.”</p><p>“Nope. I did the whole problem set myself. Took a while for it to come back to me, but Clemmensen reductions aren’t that bad.”</p><p>Of course, Dr. Bennet then feels compelled to triple check Lizzie’s answer key against his own before he’s satisfied. Although, her triumphant smirk when he concedes seems…different today. Thomas Bennet is, if nothing else, well-versed in the many moods of his favorite daughter.</p><p>“Aside from wanting to ease the workload off my TAs, Lizzie, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”</p><p>She pouts. “I can’t just want to see you?”</p><p>“Shouldn’t you be off saving lives or something?”</p><p>“No, this is my day off. But Jane’s working today, so I thought I’d keep you company.”</p><p>“Ah, glad to know your dear old dad’s company is still a close second to Jane’s.”</p><p>That earns him a giggle at least. “Actually, Dad, I do have an ulterior motive for visiting.”</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>“Apparently, Mom was planning to pay Jane and me a visit today, before Jane realized that she’s on call.”</p><p>“So she won’t stop pressing for details about Jane’s young man, and you’ve come to hide yourself away in my office behind the double-locked doors of the o-chem lab, eh? A perfectly understandable reaction, in that case!” He hangs up his coat and heads for the door. “Well, I’ll be in the lab if you need me. Try to leave at least some of the grading for Hill and the other TAs, all right?”</p><p>Lizzie’s smile drops as soon as the door is shut behind her father. Her phone is ringing again, and the name on the caller ID promises even worse torture to come if she puts this off. Better to rip the Band-Aid off now than prolong it.</p><p>She presses “accept.”</p><p>“Mother, I already told you, I’m done talking about this—”</p><p>“<em>Elizabeth, if you hang up on me again, I swear to God—”</em></p><p>“Yes, Jane is seeing a guy. His name is Bing, he’s an emergency medicine intern at our hospital. Yes, he has an M.D. too, and no, they’re not engaged yet. Does that answer all your questions?”</p><p>A pause. Then, “Is he rich?”</p><p>“His family probably is.” (They have to be, if they can support their 26-year-old unemployed daughter applying to med schools three years in a row<sup>1</sup>, right?)</p><p>“Are his parents doctors?”</p><p>“I don’t know, I didn’t ask.”</p><p>“Is he handsome?”</p><p>“He’s all right, but definitely more Jane’s type than mine.”</p><p>“Does he—”</p><p>“Your <em>least</em> favorite daughter is doing fine, too, thanks for asking. In fact, she recently graduated from that D.O. school you said she was too dumb for, <em>and</em> managed to match at the same hospital as your favorite M.D.-carrying daughter.”</p><p>“…Lizzie?” Her father pokes his head back in the office. “I heard yelling. Everything okay there?”</p><p>“Oh sorry, Mom, gotta go! Hey—Dad’s here! Do you want to say hi?”</p><p>“You are a cruel young lady, Lizzie,” he deadpans, accepting the phone. “Fran? Hello? …Hello?”</p><p>“She hung up on you? I can’t imagine why!”</p>
<hr/><p>“Tell me, Lizzie, are things actually going well?”</p><p>She frowns at her father from across the table. “What makes you ask that?”</p><p>“Well, for starters, you ordered split pea soup, and you hate split pea soup. But also, you seemed a little out of sorts, even before your mother called.”</p><p>A shrug, like a sullen teenager. Which she probably was, the last time she spent any meaningful amount of time around the former Mrs. Bennet.</p><p>“I just had a bad week. Inpatient kills my enthusiasm for medicine, you know that, Dad.”</p><p>“I do know that. You told me that last week, and the week before. But now, for some reason, you’ve ordered the split pea soup and have done nothing besides push some crackers around. I’d hate for the owners of this fine establishment to think that their food is not up to your standards, especially since I’m a regular and would prefer that they keep putting extra bacon on my clam chowder.”</p><p>The café they picked for lunch was conveniently located across the street from campus. It had been a favorite haunt of hers, even back in her undergrad days. Before med school. Before the AACOMAS.</p><p>Before Mom's “slut it up” comment that marked the final breach in whatever semblance of a mother-daughter relationship they’d had left.</p><p>Fran Bennet’s blatant favoritism of Jane had never been a secret to anyone who knew their family. Growing up, it was Jane who got all the new outfits when the Bennets could afford to splurge on slightly nicer clothes, while Lizzie got her (albeit well cared-for) hand-me-downs. It was Jane who had been blessed with all the good looks and received multiple promposals to their mother’s delight, while the perpetually single Lizzie sat out senior prom altogether and earned a mere shrug from Fran. It was Jane’s piano recitals that their mother never missed an opportunity to film “for posterity,” while the same mother sat at the furthest back row at Lizzie’s with a pair of headphones on.</p><p>Lizzie could never fault Jane for their mother’s shortcomings—dear, sweet, angelic Jane, who took it upon herself to make sure Lizzie had <em>some</em> kind of nurturing maternal figure in her life. No, if there’s one thing Lizzie can thank her mother for, it’s birthing her best friend and the best big sister in the world.</p><p>Besides, Lizzie is not so petty that she can’t acknowledge that those prior instances of her mother’s partiality could simply be the biased perceptions of a half-baked teenage brain, colored by jealousy and standard teen angst. (After all, Jane <em>is</em> objectively the prettiest Bennet sister and the best pianist. And it makes sense to pass the children’s clothing down in birth order if you’re a family strapped for cash like the Bennets in the early years, when their dad was still a PhD student.) Since moving out at 18, Lizzie had had four years of undergrad to figure out what kind of relationship she wanted with her mother in her adult life. Maybe they could have even been polite, if not warm, when in company over the holidays.</p><p>That is, if it weren’t for that infamous night 4 years ago.</p><p>Jane had just been accepted to Meryton University School of Medicine—<em>an</em> <em>M.D. school</em>—a sloshed, wasted, beyond drunk Mrs. Bennet couldn’t resist bragging to all her dinner party friends. It had been Mrs. Long from the PTA who finally pointed out that Fran actually had <em>two</em> daughters get accepted to medical school within a week of each other. Lizzie, who had only briefly stopped at her parents’ house to drop off her father’s Christmas presents, happened to walk past the room unfortunately at the precise moment her mother replied, “I <em>tried</em> to tell Lizzie she was making a mistake, but you know how stubborn she can get. She’s not nearly as clever as my Jane, and the rigors of medical school are going to be too much for her to handle. If you ask me, she should have just slutted it up at college and become a stay-at-home mom. A D.O. degree is too useless to justify wasting all that tuition money!”</p><p>Despite the shocked silence that befell the guests as they noticed the subject of that rant standing in the doorway, what happened immediately afterwards was actually pretty anticlimactic. Lizzie simply gathered her coat and keys and walked out after bidding goodnight to her father. Jane quietly excused herself from the dinner table and followed her out. The sisters drove back to their apartment in silence, only broken by Jane’s “I’m sorry I didn’t stand up to her sooner, Lizzie.” Had Lizzie not handed her phone over for Jane to hide, she would have noticed the dozens of missed calls from Mom, Dad, and Lydia, which were soon followed by a series of texts from the youngest Bennet sister.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>Hey where r u?</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    <strong>Mom and dad are fighting, can u come back and pick me up too?</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    <strong>I think shes still drunk, ive never heard mom cuss so much</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    <strong>Its 2 am theyre still fighting</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    <strong>Theyre so loud omg</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    <strong>Dad just slammed a door so hard i felt the floor shake</strong>
  </p>
  <p>
    <strong>God i hate them</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>A week later, Lydia, still stuck at home, informed them that Dr. Bennet was calling a divorce attorney.</p><p>Lydia ended up staying with their dad even after starting college and commuted with him to Meryton U for classes. It was just cheaper to stay at home than to fork over money for on-campus housing, especially since Fran ended up getting 40% of Dr. Bennet’s income in alimony. These days Jane still talks to their mother, albeit infrequently, ever since Fran decided it would be appropriate to treat Jane less like a daughter and more like her personal therapist to whom she could air all the intimate details of her failed marriage. Lizzie speaks to Fran even less frequently.</p><p>She knows that realistically, her parents’ marriage had problems long before her mother’s remarks broke the proverbial camel’s back—problems that she doesn’t and shouldn’t know the details of. But she knew that her father did not respect her mother, and Lizzie had long suspected that the root of his disrespect was the fact that Fran was a middle school dropout and, accordingly, acts like someone who never learned how to behave past the age of a middle schooler. Her mother to this day still has never apologized for what she said or given any indication that she regrets it. The one exception is her recurrent lamentations that all her old friends who had been present for that spectacle no longer invite her to brunch.</p><p>Even with both her parents’ faults, though, it’s difficult not to blame herself for the divorce in driving her father to take sides.</p><p>Back in the present day, she simply tells her father, “Don’t worry, Dad. I’m sure the café will be happy to keep making your clam chowder however you like it.”</p><p>“Even so, I believe that oyster cracker would appreciate if you stopped trying to drown it in cold soup.”</p><p>She abruptly stops pushing the aforementioned cracker around in her soup and tries not to grimace as it turns to soggy mush in her mouth. “It’s just…there’s no way to say this without sounding like I’m tattling, but recently I’ve had several people—not Mom—make me feel like I’m not good enough for this hospital, or that I have less value, because I’m a D.O.”</p><p>“Are they people who matter?”</p><p>“They’re actually Bing’s sister and his best friend. So, I guess they matter since they’re important to Jane?”</p><p>“Do you feel like you can’t keep up with the M.D.s in your residency class?”</p><p>“Well…no. I mean—we’re all new to this, so we’re kind of all in the same boat? I don’t even know why it’s been eating at me so much. What Darcy said wasn’t even that mean or so unprofessional that his program director would have to get involved. I guess it just reminded me of what Mom said, and it kind of surprised me that there are so many people out there that share her attitudes.”</p><p>“If it’s any consolation, Jane’s proud of you. I’m proud of you. And I know she seems like she’d rather eat her shoes than acknowledge her dysfunctional family, but Lydia has grown up a lot these past few years. And she’s proud of you, too.”</p>
<hr/><p>Lizzie is still turning her father’s words around in her head on Monday when Anne Debourgh codes.</p><p>(After that, the only thing running through her head is <em>oh fuck, oh fuck, oh shit</em>.)</p><p>Pediatric code blues are blessedly rare, but the family medicine and pediatrics residents typically team up once a month to run simulations and stay on top of their PALS training<sup>2</sup>. Even still, there’s just something about <em>hey, your patient stopped breathing and/or doesn’t have a pulse</em> that makes all the medical knowledge in one’s brain evaporate into thin air.</p><p>Fortunately, by the time Lizzie and her senior resident sprint through the hospital and arrive on the pediatrics unit, a swarm of peds residents has beaten them to Anne’s room, and one of their attendings is running the code. Someone is already performing chest compressions, and Jane is at the head of the bed with a bag mask. From her vantage point in the hallway<sup>3</sup>, Lizzie is able to deduce from snatches of conversation between the nurses that it was apparently severe hypoxia secondary to respiratory failure, which also caused Anne’s heart rate to drop dangerously low.</p><p>“Pulse check!” someone shouts.</p><p>The chest compressions stop, and Lizzie holds her breath as Jane presses her fingers to the patient’s neck. “Pulse is forty.”</p><p>The attending nods. “Thank you, Bennet. Jenkinson, resume compressions. Bennet, prepare to intubate. Nurse Dawson, prepare the epi, 0.1 ccs per kilo, but don’t push it.” She looks up and notices Lizzie in the doorway. “Are you with this patient’s primary team?”</p><p>“Yes, Dr. Metcalfe.”</p><p>“I think we have a handle on things for now. I’ll fill you in later.”</p><p>“Thank you.” Lizzie backs away from the door, only to nearly walk right into someone. “Oops, sorry!”</p><p>“Excuse me, doctor, are you the resident taking care of this patient?”</p><p>She turns and finds herself face to face with a young man in a black dress shirt and clerical collar. “Yes?”</p><p>“Oh, hi, I’m Ricky Collins, hospital chaplain. I was asked to come speak with the patient’s mother.”</p><p>She frowns, looking around. “Well, I’m sorry to say that the patient’s mother is not here at the moment. Do you want me to look up her phone number in Anne’s chart?”</p><p>“No, no, the mother’s here. She was quite agitated earlier from all the commotion and had to be removed to one of the waiting rooms. I was able to calm her down, but I think it might help to have a doctor explain to her what’s going on, since she wasn’t able to see them resuscitating her.”</p><p>She glances back at her senior, who merely nods at her. <em>You’re on your own for this one, kid</em>.</p><p>“Oh. Of course. I’ll come then.”</p><p>Let’s get this over with. Again.</p><p>Catherine Debourgh, seated on the throne-like armchair in the family waiting room, is every bit as imperious as Lizzie last saw her. “Dr. Bennet! How kind of you to finally join us. Now is anyone going to tell me when I can see Anne again?”</p><p>“I’m sorry, Mrs. Debourgh, but Anne is not completely stabilized yet. We have a team of doctors currently doing everything they can to bring her heart rate and oxygen levels up, but—”</p><p>“I told you, you have to use eucalyptus essential oils. I use them all the time at home, and Anne never gets this bad! I was just telling Mr. Collins here that I can’t believe there isn’t a single diffuser anywhere in this hospital!”</p><p><em>Oh for fuck’s sake, the good lord is testing me</em>.</p><p>“Madam. I seem to recall sharing my concerns last week, when I admitted Anne to the hospital, that the constant exposure she is getting to essential oils at home may be causing her to develop hypersensitivity pneumonitis, which is worsening her asthma. Most children tend to outgrow their asthma by this age when they’re taking the right controller medications. It’s not normal for a sixteen-year-old to have to stay overnight in the hospital at least once a month because of frequent asthma attacks, and it’s definitely not normal for them to get so bad that their heart stops beating at a normal rate.”</p><p>“Are you accusing me of not giving my daughter her medications?”</p><p>“I should hope that’s not the implication you got from what I said, ma’am.”</p><p>“So the eucalyptus—”</p><p>“—can be the subject of a conversation in the future, when Anne is well enough to leave the hospital and follow up in our office. Right now, it’s looking like your daughter is going to need a tube put down her throat and a ventilator to help her breathe, and that’s if we can even get her heart to start beating at a normal rate again. She’s going to need ICU-level care, and I can guarantee there won’t be a diffuser there either. Now if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Debourgh, I need to start prepping for a transfer to the PICU<sup>4</sup>.”</p><p>“Now, now. I’m sure Dr. Bennet meant no offense by that,” she hears Collins say as she closes the door.</p><p>Whatever, buddy. This one’s all yours.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Btw, Mrs. Bennet wasn’t actually a neglectful or abusive mother. She was just drunk and a little too honest. And Lizzie suffers from a really bad case of middle child syndrome.<br/>Unfortunately, there isn’t going to be a Mr. Collins subplot because I can’t figure out how to do that without the hospital chaplain getting accused of sexual harassment.</p><p>Footnotes:<br/>1. If I recall correctly, the application fee was about $75-$100 per school back when I was applying to med school. And if Caroline was applying to all the top-tier schools, then she would have applied to at least 20 at a time, so that’s easily $2000 she was dropping every year. That doesn’t even factor in her family probably also paying for private tutors to help with MCAT prep, or hiring a professional consultant to polish her application package—on top of paying for 4 years of Bing’s med school tuition. (Newsflash: American higher education is elitist, more at 4 o’clock).<br/>2. PALS = Pediatrics Advanced Life Support. Basically a series of algorithms to follow when your patient is having an acute emergency. Typically involves doing CPR or knowing the appropriate medication to administer to resuscitate the patient.<br/>3. If the code team is already there, the most helpful thing you can do is stay out of the way and let them do their thing.<br/>4. PICU = pediatrics intensive care unit. Pronounced “pick-you.”</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>That scene where Mr. Darcy spends a half hour in the library with Elizabeth and doesn't say a word to her. Also, enter George Wickham</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>First of all, I can’t tell you guys how cool it is to see fellow medical-type people in the comments. Please know that I see and appreciate each and every one of ya, even if I don’t leave a reply. I’m shy and don’t know how to respond to nice people T.T</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The library is probably Lizzie’s favorite place in the hospital.</p><p>She can’t pretend to have ever checked out a book or even browsed through the shelves—since online point-of-care medical resources like UpToDate and DynaMed have effectively rendered print sources obsolete. But it’s clean and quiet and tucked away in an obscure corner of the hospital, far away from the patient care areas. Besides, pretty much no one ever comes here (because the only people allowed to use the library are employees, who are usually too busy, you know, taking care of patients). There’s also free color printing, which is always a plus. And the librarians are super helpful whenever she needs access to a journal article that’s stuck behind a stupid paywall.</p><p>There’s a lounge area in the far end of the library, partially concealed behind some probably centuries-old anatomy atlases, outfitted with a loveseat and a pair of matching armchairs with plenty of wall outlets within reach. Lizzie first discovered the spot about a month into residency, after a particularly taxing night float. She had been too drained and exhausted to go home after sign-out and instead ended up crashing on the couch in the corner…and woke up several hours later to find that no one had disturbed or even noticed her there.</p><p>In other words, it’s the perfect place to disappear when she doesn’t feel like dealing with other humans. So now she’s been coming here in her free time ever since she decided to dedicate a few hours each week to brush up on whatever interesting topic she comes across during her patient encounters.</p><p>At least, it <em>used to be</em> the perfect place to avoid people.</p><p>A Yeti cup thunks down on the table, startling Lizzie from her reading. Its owner—tall, dark-haired, grumpy, and offensively familiar—proceeds to shuck his jacket before collapsing on the armchair opposite her with scarcely a nod in acknowledgement.</p><p>
  <em>The hell?</em>
</p><p>She’s equal parts astonished at the fact that Will Darcy, of all people, has discovered this spot—<em>her</em> spot—as she is utterly baffled that he’s voluntarily spending any amount of time around her. The library is deserted, and there is a perfectly available self-study area not twenty feet away where he could have a whole table to himself.</p><p>All the empty seating the library has to offer, and he just has to choose the one that’s already been staked out? One would think that Darcy would welcome the chance to not spend any extra amount of time around Lizzie, given that he sees enough of her when they’re stuck third-wheeling with Jane and Bing.</p><p>(Lizzie’s excuse is that she actually lives with Jane, so she has no choice but to be around when Bing comes over for dinner. Darcy…probably just doesn’t have any other friends. Dude should have gone into radiology.)</p><p>After a minute or two, it becomes apparent that he plans to keep doing whatever it is he's doing on his iPad and not bother making any conversation with her.</p><p>No <em>sorry for interrupting your reading</em>? No <em>hi Lizzie, mind if I join you</em>?</p><p>Okay, fine. Whatever. She has better things to do.</p><p>Today her reading topic of choice is EVALI<sup>1</sup>. One of the new patients on the service was a 17-year-old who had come in with shortness of breath of unknown etiology, and her attending Dr. Lambert-Gardiner had brought up the possibility of vaping. Lizzie had heard vaguely about it last year when the CDC reports came out that (surprise, surprise) e-cigarette manufacturers like Juul had lied about the safety of their products to lure an entire generation of teens into becoming smokers. Because the disease was relatively new, it hadn’t been added to medical school curricula in time for her class to learn much about it. So Lizzie figured she would read about it today so she can better prepare for rounds. Maybe take note of the presenting signs and symptoms, relevant labs and imaging, and management plan.</p><p>She’s not sure how much time has passed (perhaps half an hour?) before Darcy’s phone alarm goes off. He sighs and silences it, then abruptly rises and heads for the exit without so much as a <em>see you later</em> or backward glance.</p><p>“Thank you for your most stimulating company and compelling conversation,” she mutters.</p><p>(He doubles back two minutes later to retrieve the Yeti cup he almost abandoned at the table, then scurries off again like she’s set his pants on fire.)</p><p>What a weirdo.</p><hr/><p>She’s on a computer chart-checking a new consult when she senses someone approaching her.</p><p>“Hey, I’m going to order a bolus for room 18,” he announces without preamble. “Can you put an IV in her?”</p><p>Of <em>course</em> it’s William Darcy. It’s like she can’t even breathe in the direction of the ED without having the absolutely grotesque, nauseating, run-the-other-way-as-if-your-life-depended-on-it pleasure of crossing paths with him.</p><p>“I can try, but I can’t guarantee you’ll like the result of it<sup>2</sup>.”</p><p>He blinks in confusion, then frowns when he finally looks at her face. “Oh. Lizzie! Sorry, I thought you were my nurse.” He glances up and stiffens, catching sight of something behind her, and then stalks off before she can react.</p><p>What was <em>that</em>?</p><p>The EMT leaning over the countertop whistles. “Wow, what a jackass.”</p><p>By her estimate, he must have been loitering there for at least the past ten minutes, scrolling through his phone. His partner had stepped outside the double doors for a smoke, so they were likely waiting for another call. She’d nodded at him politely in acknowledgement when she first sat down at the workstation across from him, but they had otherwise ignored each other.</p><p>Now she smiles wryly and shrugs. “Not the first time I’ve been mistaken for a nurse.” Being small and female, with a tendency to misplace her whitecoat, tends to be conducive to that.  It wasn’t Darcy’s fault she chose a computer at the nurse’s station because it was faster and more convenient than going to the ED residents’ work room.</p><p>Her companion seems determined to make conversation, though. “I think you handled him pretty well. Women make up more than half of new doctors now. He can’t just assume any woman in a hospital is a nurse. You’re not even wearing nurses’ scrubs<sup>3</sup>! Then again—” he scoffs “—it’s William Darcy, so he probably did that on purpose.”</p><p><em>That</em> gets her attention.</p><p>“You know Darcy?”</p><p>“Know him? We used to be best friends. Practically grew up together!” He flashes her a dimpled grin and extends a hand over the counter. “I’m George. George Wickham.”</p><p>His handshake is firm, confident. Warm. Hangs on for maybe a little longer than strictly necessary.</p><p>(Or maybe she imagined it.)</p><p>“I-I’m Lizzie Bennet. Family medicine intern.”</p><p>“Pleased to make your acquaintance, <em>Dr.</em> Bennet.”</p><p>“Likewise. I’m intrigued though. I’ve had to put up with Darcy for months now, and he never mentioned you.”</p><p>“The guy makes friends and drops them like he spends money. And, look, I don’t like to make my business known to just anybody, but he screwed me over royally.”</p><p>Lizzie is tempted to ask for more details, but she’s interrupted by a cry across the hall.</p><p>“<em>AAaaghghgh, it hurts so bad!”</em></p><p>George winces. “Aaaaaand that’s probably the ankle fracture I brought in this morning. You have her?”</p><p>“57-year-old female, tripped and fell down the steps, broken ankle? Sounds like it. Ortho’s in there admitting her, but I got consulted to manage her diabetes while she’s here.”</p><p>“You should have seen that ankle, though. Neurovascularly intact, but the skin’s broken open, and the foot’s pointing completely in the wrong direction. I can’t tell you how unsettling it is to see someone wiggle their toes while their entire foot is dangling from the leg by a few ligaments<sup>4</sup>.”</p><p>“Uh…thank you? For that completely horrifying mental image?”</p><p>Just then, a trio of ortho residents emerges from behind the curtain, heading in the direction of the supply room.</p><p>George watches them contemplatively, then turns back to Lizzie. “You know, even without x-rays, I was pretty sure that’s a tri-mal. I bet they’re going to wash it out and try a closed reduction while they’re waiting to get her on the OR schedule.”</p><p>“So you’re saying I should wait for them to finish and come back later to do the consult?”</p><p>“Yeah, I doubt anyone cares what her blood sugars are right now. Even if her A1c is through the roof, I don’t think there’s any way they’re going to go non-op with this one. I don’t know why they wasted their time consulting you before the fracture was dealt with<sup>5</sup>.”</p><p>“I’m impressed by your knowledge of fracture management, Mr. Wickham. You said you’re an EMT, right?”</p><p>He taps his shoulder. “Yep, that’s what the badge says. <em>But</em>—” (he makes a show of forced nonchalance as he pushes off from the countertop and turns to walk away) “—I actually used to be an ortho resident, too.”</p><p>
  <em>Wait, what?</em>
</p><p>“Hey, you can’t just drop a bombshell like that and leave me hanging here!” she exclaims.</p><p>He laughs. “Well, come on then! Ortho’s coming back, and since you’re already down here in the ED with nothing else to do, you might as well come see them do this closed reduction. You know, for learning purposes.”</p><p>They meet up with the orthopedics team, and Wickham dives right in and offers the patient words of comfort and encouragement while they clean the wound out with iodine and saline. Lizzie has to admit that she’s impressed when he thinks to offer the woman his hand to squeeze through the pain, as the ortho residents manipulate her ankle in an attempt to realign the bones.</p><p>Ortho eventually determines that the patient cannot tolerate the pain after multiple failed attempts to reduce the fracture, so they leave to put in orders for sedation and a muscle relaxant.</p><p>Wickham, as it turns out, is still not done surprising her.</p><p>“Will and I went to school together all the way through college,” he says quietly as she watches him start an IV in the patient’s hand, while a nurse returns with a bag of saline. “His parents were both doctors. His dad was a well-respected cardiologist in our hometown, and he was my dad’s cardiologist. And <em>my</em> dad was Will’s swim coach, so our families were always close. I spent a lot of summers shadowing in Dr. Darcy’s office—I actually called him Uncle George growing up.”</p><p>“George?”</p><p>“That’s right. My parents named me after him, for saving my dad’s life. He was my godfather and the best role model I could look for. But his son? Let’s just say the apple fell very far from the tree.”</p><p>He gathers the scattered plastic wrappers from the IV tubing supplies and tosses them in the trash, then properly disposes of the sharps and gestures for Lizzie to follow him out of the patient’s room.</p><p>“Where are we going?”</p><p>“Nowhere in particular. Just…what I’m about to tell you is for your ears only. Dr. Darcy and his wife passed away about ten years ago, and I’d hate for their memory and legacy to be ruined if word gets around about what their son did.”</p><p>“That bad?”</p><p>“Back in college, Will and I had this class together where we teamed up for this huge final project that was worth half our grade. One day he must have decided that he was above his company and no longer felt the need to be friends with me. And instead of, you know, handling it like a normal person, he went behind my back, deleted my half of the project, turned in his half—and then convinced the professor that our project was only half-finished because I didn’t pull my weight. I ended up failing that class and nearly flunking out of college.”</p><p>“And there was nothing you could do to convince the professor you were innocent? Get the ethics committee involved?”</p><p>“Unfortunately, that was in the days before Google Docs and other ways to track who did what work. I’ll be honest: Will <em>was</em> the better student. He actually went to office hours and kissed up to the professor, while I was more of a ‘do the bare minimum but do it well’ kind of guy. So the prof believed him, and there was nothing I could do about it.”</p><p>“Oh my,” Lizzie breathes, feeling a bit like some fragile 1800s maiden who needs to sit down lest she faint from shock. “I mean, I knew the guy was a jerk. Hell, the first time I met him, he called me ugly and dissed me for being a family med D.O. But I never thought he was capable of that!”</p><p>“It actually gets worse, if you can believe it. Because even though I failed that class and sank my GPA, I did pretty well for myself. Worked for a year as an ER scribe so I could have a better chance of getting into med school. Managed to get into med school in spite of that GPA. Scored well on my Steps<sup>6</sup> and matched into the ortho residency program at Ramsgate General. But then, during my intern year, Will got me fired from residency—he apparently made up some accusations that I got involved with a patient. He went to my program directors and invoked the name of his cardiologist dad, so of course they all believed him over me. It was a whole mess.”</p><p>“That’s horrible! I can’t imagine anything you could’ve done that would warrant him doing something like that to you!”</p><p>“Will is unbelievably vindictive. I think he was always jealous of how close I was to his dad, or how I got into med school a year before he did, so he took it out on me after his parents died.”</p><p>“Even still, the fact that he got you <em>fired</em> from residency—that means that you’ve basically been barred from doing residency anywhere else ever again, right?”</p><p>“Well, if I applied to some program in the middle of nowhere, in a specialty that no one wants to do, then maybe they would be desperate enough to sign me on. But you’re right, I’m basically blacklisted from ever working as a doctor now—and I’m probably going to be saddled with all my med school debt for the rest of my life.”</p><p>“And he still did that to you knowingly? What a <em>snake</em>! No wonder he ran off when he saw you.”</p><p>“Oh yeah. It’s a funny story, actually. After I lost everything, I knew I had to make the most of my situation, so I got trained as an EMT and found a job out here with Meryton EMS. And I’ve been here for the past year and a half and taking petty revenge on him ever since. It’s like, a homeless schizophrenic is having chest pain? I’m sure he’ll be best served by seeing Dr. Darcy! Let’s bypass Rosings Memorial and go to MCMC—it’s only another 10-minute drive! And now he thinks it’s bad mojo to make eye contact with me, because sooner or later, I’ll bring him a patient who’s a pain in the ass.”</p><p>“No kidding! He basically does the same thing to me! I feel like he always pages me with a late admission right before sign-out, so I end up leaving work an hour late—and I have no idea what I ever did to him to deserve it. But hearing what he did to you—throwing you under the bus in college for no apparent reason—now it’s starting to make more sense!”</p><p>Their conversation takes them out of the ED to the hospital Starbucks. Wickham ends up paying for Lizzie’s coffee despite her protests that residents get employee discounts. Lizzie invites him to hang out with her, Jane, and Bing some time (“It’ll give me a reason not to have Darcy tag along”), and they’re about to exchange numbers when Wickham’s radio crackles to life.</p><p>It’s something about an 80-year-old lady having a stroke at one of the local nursing homes.</p><p>“Maybe I’ll see you around, <em>Dr.</em> Bennet?” he says with a wink, before rushing off to respond to the call.</p><p>Lizzie walks back to the family medicine department with her thoughts full of him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Lol basically all the hospital names are going to be ripped from the names of cities/towns from the book because I’m not creative enough to name places.<br/><br/>Footnotes:<br/>1. EVALI = E-cigarette/Vaping Associated Lung Injury. Remember when CDC reports on EVALI took medical news by storm in late 2019 as this new horrible “epidemic,” only to completely disappear from the national conversation when COVID happened?<br/>2. Anesthesiologists are probably the only doctors who are good at starting IVs. I’m pretty sure I’ve never put an IV in anything but a mannequin and wouldn’t be able to hook a bag of saline to it to save my life.<br/>3. Traditionally, if you’re an internal medicine or family medicine resident working on the inpatient service, you’re expected to dress business casual. These days in the real world (i.e. in times of plague), most of us are just wearing scrubs every day to work no matter what rotation we’re on, because changing in and out of scrubs at work is better than bringing COVID home on your clothes. But we’re pretending COVID didn’t happen in this universe.<br/>4. Gruesome, I know, but based on personal experience.<br/>5. Duh, Wickham was totally flexing his medical knowledge so he could tell Lizzie about his tragic past.<br/>6. USMLE Step 1 and 2 are taken during med school. You thought the MCAT was bad? Say hello to the (M.D.) med school equivalent of the MCAT, except it’s three separate tests (Step 2 is broken into a clinical knowledge test and a separate clinical skills test). (The D.O.s have to take the COMLEX, but I hear they can also take Step 1 if they want.) If you don’t do well on Step 1, then you won’t be competitive enough for certain residencies (this will be true up until 2022, when Step 1 becomes pass-fail). And even after all that, there’s still Step 3 to look forward to in residency.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Various encounters that Elizabeth has with Mr. Darcy in Hertfordshire</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I don’t know, Lizzie. It could have all been a big misunderstanding.”</p><p>Oh, Jane. Dear, sweet, innocent summer child Jane…</p><p>It’s a rare evening for Lizzie and Jane to have their apartment to themselves, and what better way to decompress than to sit down with romcoms and glasses of mulled wine? Bing is at a pre-interview dinner with some residency applicants for the EM program. And Darcy is…well, Darcy is doing whatever it is Darcy does when he can’t hang out with Bing. He’s probably at home lounging around in $5,000 boxers watching BBC miniseries with people he pays to be his friends, since no sane human being could ever actually put up with him.</p><p>Not that it matters because as long as he’s absent, Lizzie gets the perfect opportunity to relay to her sister the new developments in the Darcy situation.</p><p>Jane, of course, had listened with astonishment as Lizzie recounted the conversation she had with George Wickham a week ago, interjecting with “he didn’t!” and “that’s awful!” at the appropriate moments. But as their long-forgotten movie fades to credits and Lizzie concludes her story, Jane reverts back to her propensity to give everyone, no matter how undeserving, the benefit of the doubt.</p><p>“This George guy seems like a decent person. I’ve never met him, of course, but he seemed nice to you. But we’ve known Will for months now. Sure, he’s a little…prickly until you get to know him—but he’s friends with Bing, and Bing has had nothing but nice things to say about him.”</p><p>“Yeah, of course Darcy’s going to be nice to Bing,” Lizzie snorts. “They’re both rich! And went to med school together! Bing is exactly the kind of person that Darcy wouldn’t be embarrassed to be around.”</p><p>“Lizzie. <em>Lizzie</em>, you know I love you. But don’t you think you’re being a little too harsh on Will?”</p><p>“Nope! I trust my gut, and my gut tells me Darcy is a snob. The first thing he ever said about me was that I’m <em>family med</em>. And a <em>D.O.</em>”</p><p>“Both of those things are true.”</p><p>“You weren’t there! He said it like it was beneath him to talk to me. And he asked me to put in an IV for him, as if I didn’t have my own work to do—as if I was his nurse to order around!”</p><p>“Well…maybe it was an honest mistake? Maybe he didn’t recognize you at first? You did say you were at the nursing station and not the resident work room.”</p><p>“I was dressed up! You know, like a resident working on inpatient?” Lizzie gestures emphatically at her outfit: nice slacks and a green blouse, which coincidentally was the exact outfit she had been wearing during the aforementioned incident last week. “My point is, I wouldn’t put it past Darcy to have done it on purpose to put me in my place. The implication being, I’m a D.O. in family med, so I might as well be a nurse—not that nurses are inferior to doctors, of course,” she adds hastily. “But if anyone thought they were, it would be that <em>elitist, William Darcy</em>!”</p><p>“I understand what you’re saying, but I think you might just be reading him wrong. I think that he genuinely likes you as a person, Lizzie.”</p><p>“<em>Darcy?”</em> Lizzie nearly spits out her wine. “<em>Genuine? Likes </em>people? It’s like every time you say that, an angel loses its wings.”</p><p>A pillow sails across the couch. “Now you’re just being dramatic.”</p><p>“Weren’t you paying attention, Jane? He ruined George’s life! Derailed his future because he couldn’t stand the idea of someone whose parents aren’t doctors climbing the social ladder and becoming more successful than him!”</p><p>“Actually…” Here, Jane’s tone turns serious as she sets her glass down on the coffee table. “That’s something I don’t understand. You said that George started med school a year before Will did, right?”</p><p>“That’s why Darcy was jealous of him, from what I gathered.”</p><p>“So Will would still have been a student at Cornell when George was an intern at Ramsgate. How can a fourth year med student influence the ortho program at an entirely unaffiliated hospital on the other side of the country into firing one of their residents?”</p><p>“He was a rich boy earning his MD at Cornell, and his cardiologist daddy was kind of a big deal?”</p><p>“But if what happened when they were in college is true, then why would Will go after George to make more trouble, after they hadn’t had contact in five or six years? Something about this story doesn’t add up.”</p><p>“Whatever, sis. You’re just siding with Darcy because you’re dating his best friend. You don’t know how vindictive he is.”</p><p>“Come on, Lizzie, be realistic. We can’t take sides if we don’t actually know what happened. If what George told you is true, then this new information we have about Will is very troubling. But if it’s not true, then that would mean that George was being disingenuous. Or what if it was a big misunderstanding, and neither of them is the bad guy? I just don’t think we should be jumping to conclusions when we don’t know the details.”</p><p>Lizzie huffs. It’s not like she didn’t try to get more details.</p><p>She actually did bring up the subject of George Wickham to Darcy once, when she was forced to endure yet another dinner with him while Jane and Bing were making goo-goo eyes at each other across the table. Darcy had tensed a little at the mention of his nemesis’s name, then replied cryptically, “George Wickham is good at making friends. Whether he can keep them is another story.”</p><p>She’d shot back, “Funny, that’s exactly what he said about you.”</p><p>He had no further reply to that, but she did notice him clenching his jaw afterwards. Probably scheming ways to get Wickham fired from Meryton EMS, too.</p><hr/><p>In retrospect, Carter’s is probably not the ideal place for a meet and greet dinner.</p><p>The bar and arcade downstairs are raucous enough to walk through. But even upstairs in the lofted restaurant area, it’s too dimly lit, and the blaring music from the dance floor reverberates throughout the establishment, making it quite the chore to attempt any kind of conversation without shouting at the top of one’s lungs.</p><p>Not that Lizzie had a choice in where the dinner would be. There’s not a whole lot of options in a small town like Meryton. But who is she to complain, when the residency program is paying for her dinner <em>and</em> paying her to chat with the new applicants the night before their interviews?</p><p>At least the food is great, and the atmosphere is casual enough that most applicants could feel more like they’re at a gathering with friends than scrutinized under a microscope. Plus, the drinks are decently priced, so it’s a favorite haunt for a lot of the MCMC residents. And it’s close enough to the hospital that Lizzie has joined her co-interns after work for happy hour at least twice a month to bitch about difficult patients they’re dealing with (all HIPAA-compliant venting, of course). It helps to see if these prospective future interns’ personalities can gel well with the current residency classes in a more laid-back setting.</p><p>Tonight’s little cohort of interviewees happens to be all-female. Lizzie and Charlotte meet them at the entrance to Carter’s and begin the obligatory small talk and icebreakers while waiting for the rest of the party to arrive. Several of them seem a little shy, but she can’t blame them since it’s still pretty early on in the interview season.</p><p>(It’s hard to believe that this time a year ago, she was going through the same agonizing process of living out of her suitcase while traveling around the country begging residency programs—any program—to hire her out of med school.)</p><p>After they’re ushered to their table by a server and menus are passed around, the applicants seem to warm up to them well enough. They’re an eclectic group, their combined interests in family medicine encompassing sports med, addiction med, geriatrics, global health, and women’s health. One of them is an avid hiker and birdwatcher. Another runs a lifestyle/self-help blog called <em>Emma Approved</em>.</p><p>While Charlotte launches into an animated discussion with the lifestyle blogger, Lizzie is about to coax some conversation out of the shyer members of their party when a long wool coat suddenly brushes past her.</p><p>“Hello, Lizzie.”</p><p>…Apparently, the emergency medicine residency is also hosting their pre-interview dinner at Carter’s tonight.</p><p>“Darcy,” she responds coolly.</p><p>Emma and Charlotte pause in their conversation, and everyone else at their table simultaneously turns to watch with supreme interest.</p><p>“It’s been a while.” He’s fiddling with the buttons on his cuff. “Are you on a new rotation now?”</p><p>“Office.”</p><p>“And how is that going?”</p><p>“Fine, thanks.”</p><p>He finally notices the half-dozen pairs of eager eyes trained on them and clears his throat. “Well, I’ll just be…joining my table over there. I’m hosting a meet and greet tonight, too—but for emergency med. Uh…enjoy your evening—ladies.”</p><p>Charlotte whistles when he’s out of earshot. “Well that was random.”</p><p>“Is he your ex or something?” Emma asks the question casually, but there’s something about the way she and the other applicants (and Charlotte, too—that traitor) lean forward in their chairs that tells Lizzie she’s going to be in for a long night of ribbing.</p><p>The most effective answer would probably be “No, he’s just a pretentious asshole who only talks to people who are beneath him to remind them that he went to <em>Cornell</em> and got into a way more competitive residency.” But she has to make a good first impression of the family med program, and she’s pretty sure her program director won’t appreciate hearing tomorrow from the interviewees that there’s petty inter-specialty drama going on that could potentially scare away decent applicants.</p><p>So she simply replies, “That was Will Darcy from EM. He’s just a friend of a friend.”</p><p>“Ah, yes. A friend of the friend who is dating your sister,” Charlotte adds, smirking at Lizzie’s glare. “I have to say, Lizzie, for someone who’s on <em>friendly </em>terms with the guy, it’s curious how you barely spoke three words to him.” Clearly, she’s oversharing to play up the in-this-residency-we-tease-each-other-because-we’re-a-family angle for the applicants.</p><p>Fortunately, Lizzie is rescued from having to answer that by their server returning to take their orders.</p><hr/><p>“He’s staring at you,” Emma stage-whispers.</p><p>“Who? Darcy?” Lizzie rolls her eyes, resisting the urge to check for herself. “Yeah, he does that.” Probably sneering at the table of <em>family med</em> residents and prospective residents pretending they’re a legitimate specialty. Probably making bets with his table of EM snobs on how many of the “ladies” at the FM table are osteopaths.</p><p>“He stares at Lizzie all the time,” Charlotte helpfully pipes up.</p><p>Lizzie kicks her under the table, which earns a shit-eating grin.</p><p>“Ooh, so there <em>is</em> more to the story then?” To her surprise, this came not from Emma the instigator, but from one of the quieter applicants in the opposite corner.</p><p>“I think he has a crush on her,” Charlotte declares, to their collective delight.</p><p>Lizzie sighs. So much for this being a pre-interview meet and greet. She makes a mental note to inform the program directors that this particular group of applicants is prone to gossip and would make for too much drama in the program. And then family med would be even more of a laughingstock to the other specialties than it already is. Yep, they definitely shouldn’t rank any of the women present tonight.</p><p>“His friend tried to introduce us, and he basically said I wasn’t pretty enough or smart enough for him.”</p><p>“That’s not exactly—”</p><p>“Char, you were there.”</p><p>“Okay, but you have dinner with him at least every other night.”</p><p>“What does that have to do with anything? His best friend is dating my sister, so we end up hanging out a lot as a group.”</p><p>“So we’ve established he’s not opposed to spending time with you. Oh—and what about that time he asked you to dance?”</p><p>“He did no such thing!”</p><p>Charlotte ignores her protest and addresses their snickering audience. “So we were at this party, right? ‘Cause the EM residents are <em>cool</em>, and Bing was hosting this little get-together at his place and invited all the EM, FM, and peds residents. And I’m in the corner with Lizzie when Darcy comes up to us—”</p><p>“And started bragging about himself, as usual. Great conversation opener—”</p><p>“—and he’s like, ‘Hey, how do you like these speakers? They have a 270-degree delivery system providing true stereoscopic sound. I put them in myself.’ And Lizzie here, she looks him in the eye and goes, completely deadpan, ‘Good for you,’ and pulls out her phone and starts fake-texting. And then he asked her to dance.”</p><p>“Did not.”</p><p>“Lizzie, I was there.”</p><p>“At what point were the words ‘Lizzie, do you want to get your groove thing on?’ uttered by Darcy?”</p><p>“…Hopefully never. That would be disturbing. He <em>actually</em> said something along the lines of, ‘Hey, this song is kind of catchy. I hear it’s popular for dancing. You like this kind of music, right?’ And then she ignored him.”</p><p>“See? That was by no means an invitation to dance.”</p><p>“It’s <em>implied</em>. He was talking to you at a party. He wanted to dance with you.”</p><p>“The only thing he wanted was for me to say I like popular music, so that he could mock me for being basic, and dumb, and a <em>D.O.</em>, and in <em>family med</em>. Also, can you <em>please</em> stop looking over at their table, Charlotte? He’s going to catch on that we’re talking about him and get the wrong idea. Our tiny kitchen table back at my place barely has enough room for me, Jane, Bing, Darcy, <em>and</em> Darcy’s massive ego, so I really don’t need you inflating it for him.”</p><p>“Well, then the solution to that problem would be for you to date him so you can go on dates without Jane and Bing. That should make room for Darcy’s ego at the table.”</p><p>“Wait a minute, I thought we’re supposed to be getting to know our <em>residency applicants</em>. Not trying to get me a date.”</p><p>“I don’t see what the problem is,” Emma interjects. “He’s cute.”</p><p>“He’s not so cute when you’re on the inpatient service and he pages you five times a day with new admissions. I’ve lost track of the number of times the sick bastard has paged me right before sign-out, so I was stuck doing late admissions instead of getting to go home when night team comes in.”</p><p>“Our service isn’t that busy!” Charlotte cuts in quickly. “I know our curriculum is a little more inpatient-heavy during intern year, but it’s really not as bad as Lizzie is making it out to be. And now that I think about it, he <em>did </em>offer her a ride home the last few times that happened.”</p><p>“Ah.” Emma nods sagely. “He must have timed the admissions so that she would stay in longer and leave at the same time his shift ends.”</p><p>“He only offers because I yelled at him the last few times and he wanted to prove he’s morally superior.”</p><p>“None of the other EM residents seek you out when you’re down in the ED, though. Darcy always makes a point to discuss the patients with you after you see them<sup>1</sup>.”</p><p>“Because he thinks I’m too dumb to come up with a treatment plan.”</p><p>“<em>Or</em>,” Charlotte points out with exaggerated patience, “he’s helping you figure out a plan because he knows you’re a new intern, and he wants you to look good when you’re precepting<sup>2</sup> with your attending.”</p><p>“Yes. Because he thinks I’m too dumb to come up with a plan on my own.”</p><p>“For the record, he’s still staring at you,” Emma reports. “I don’t think he’s looked away or talked to any of his interviewees in the last twenty minutes.”</p><p>“If I tell you about the cute EMT I met in the ED, will you all finally let me get this dinner back on track and tell you about our program’s research opportunities?”</p><p>Charlotte slow-claps. “Aaand she’s moved from the denial stage to bargaining. Let’s congratulate Lizzie on her success.”</p><hr/><p>Much later in the night, after dinner wraps up and their guests head off to their hotels with promises to behave at their interview tomorrow, Lizzie finds a new notification on her phone. Someone has left her a Facebook message.</p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>Hey it’s George Wickham<br/>Only took me 2 wks to sort through all the Elizabeth Bennets on fb to find you lol<br/>How’ve you been doc? </strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>She decides to shoot a quick reply before bed.</p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>Not bad, yourself?</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>His reply is immediate.</p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>Work keeps me rly busy. You know, lots of old ppl to bring in for chest pain. Not a lot of pretty 20-something lady doctors to see</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Well, well, well. He’s a forward one. She contemplates responding with something flirty back, but it’s nearly 11 p.m., and she has a full day of office appointments booked for tomorrow.</p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>Well, I’m starting night float this weekend. Maybe I’ll see you around in the ED?</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>A pause. Then, three dots.</p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>Count on it</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Footnotes:<br/>1. The way an admission works, the ED provider will see a patient and treat/stabilize them. Then, if they decide the patient meets inpatient criteria (i.e. too sick to go home safely), they page the admitting service (internal med, ICU, family med, pediatrics, surgery, cardiology, etc.). The admitting provider then has to come down to the ED to interview and examine the patient, then come up with a treatment plan, put in admission orders, and write the admission note. (Or they can decide that an admission isn’t indicated and recommend that the patient be discharged home.) Once the ED provider has consulted and paged the admitting provider, then their job is pretty much done. Some of my colleagues like to track down the ED provider and give them an update on the patient, but that’s just as a courtesy and isn’t necessary if you’re busy or can’t find them (since they’ll be able to see your admission note and orders in the electronic record anyway).<br/>All of this is to say that Darcy seeks Lizzie out every time she does an admission because he’s going out of his way to talk to her. And since he sucks at conversation, he sticks to talking about the patients because it’s a safe topic. So Lizzie takes this to mean that he’s questioning every clinical decision she makes.<br/>2. Residents who do an admission have to present the patient case and run their treatment plan by the attending physician for approval. That way you don’t accidentally kill someone with your lack of experience. Plus, it helps to build the resident’s confidence in their decision making to hear that the attending agrees with the plan.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Netherfield ball. Kind of.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In hindsight, Lizzie should have known better than to make plans while on night float, since the universe seems determined to throw a wrench into them every damn time.</p><p>So far, they’ve admitted two adults, had to rush to three rapid responses, and transferred one dude to the ICU. Also, her mother is apparently exceedingly bored because five calls from LIZZIE DON’T ANSWER THIS NUMBER have blown up her phone and gone ignored.</p><p>And it’s only 8 p.m. </p><p>Which is doubly bad. Not only is the night still young, but she had also made plans to meet up with George Wickham during his break...which should have started half an hour ago.</p><p>He’s cool about it, though.</p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>Sorry, I’m having a crazy night and probably won’t be able to meet up for a while</strong>
  </p>
  <p><strong>No worries I know how nights can be<br/></strong> <strong>I’ll bring you some coffee when you do get a chance to stop by the ED</strong></p>
</blockquote><p>The only good thing she has going for her right now is that, after the insanity from the rapids, her senior resident’s mental wellbeing was visibly starting to fray at the edges, so a certain EM resident thought it would be wiser to just give sign-out on the admissions and not bother Lizzie while they were down there.</p><p>And <em>dammit</em>, she should have aborted that thought because, as if on cue, now the ED is paging again.</p><p>She punches the callback number into the desk phone with slightly more force than necessary.</p><p>“Lizzie from family med,” she grounds out.</p><p>“Hi Lizzie, it’s Will Darcy, EM.”</p><p><em>No shit you’re an EM resident. No need to rub it in. </em>(Has he already announced himself as such to her three times tonight? Yes. Is it hypocritical to hate him for that, even though she always refers to herself as “Lizzie from family med” over the phone? Irrelevant. Night float is making her snarky.)</p><p>“…I’ve got a new admission for you. Lillian Netherfield in room 2, lead poisoning. 4-year-old female with a history of elevated lead levels, no prior hospitalizations. Looks like her baseline lead is usually in the 20s, being checked every 3 months by her outpatient PCP. She came in tonight from the PCP’s office with a fingerstick lead level of 45. She has no symptoms. I’ve already talked with Peds. Jane agrees that the kid should be admitted because of the elevated lead level, but she should go to family med instead of Peds because her PCP is a family doc.”</p><p>“Um…” Distractedly, she jabs the reject button on her cellphone as LIZZIE DON’T ANSWER THIS NUMBER starts calling again. “Sorry, you said the kid’s asymptomatic, right? What exactly would we be admitting her for?”</p><p>“Chelation therapy?”</p><p>She can almost hear the <em>duh</em> after his reply.</p><p><em>Crap, crap, crap</em>. What were the guidelines for treating lead poisoning again? Probably doesn’t hurt to check before going down. And if Jane’s already heard the story and thinks the patient needs to be admitted, then Lizzie will take her word for it. “Okay. My senior is still up on the floor dealing with a rapid. I could…come down and evaluate the kid in the meantime?”</p><p>“That would be great, thanks.” <em>Click</em>.</p><hr/><p>A peruse through the patient’s medical record turns up very little. Apparently, Lillian is a fairly healthy kid, with the exception of the elevated lead levels. Up to date on vaccinations, no chronic medical conditions, no medications, normal height and weight for her age, meeting all her milestones on time. Jane hasn’t written a note yet, but from Darcy’s note, Lillian has no abdominal pain, irritability, or neurologic deficits.</p><p>Lizzie is a little peeved to see that he’s added an addendum to his note to say that “Family med agreed to admit” since she made no such promises<sup>1</sup>.</p><p>The guidelines on DynaMed are telling her that treatment for lead poisoning should be based on lead levels drawn from venous blood, since capillary (fingerstick) levels are less accurate. Chelation therapy is indicated for venous lead levels of 45 or higher, but it can be managed with oral medication if the level is under 70. IV chelation (i.e. inpatient treatment) is only indicated once the venous lead level is 70 or higher. Children with visible lead chips on abdominal x-ray may also be considered for bowel decontamination<sup>2</sup>.</p><p>Well, now she’s more than a little peeved, since it looks like the ED hasn’t checked any blood work or called Poison Control for recommendations yet. In fact, there aren’t even any orders pending. And why did this kid’s PCP send her into the ED without doing the proper workup and handling it as an outpatient? Is anybody responsible for taking care of this patient actually going to do their job?</p><p>And now there’s a new note in Lillian’s chart. A pediatrics consult note from Jane, as a matter of fact. Sure enough, she recommends getting an abdominal x-ray to check for visible lead chips in the kid’s gut, as well as a venous lead level to confirm whether she needs chelation therapy. “Patient may be discharged home to follow up with PCP as outpatient if x-ray is clear and lead is &lt;70.”</p><p>So much for “Peds agrees she should be admitted.” That fucker. She should have known he would try to pull some crap like this and make her do all the work for him. That’s what she gets for unthinkingly agreeing to see a patient after taking <em>William Darcy</em> at his word.</p><p>George Wickham would understand what she’s going through, since Darcy had screwed him over too. Multiple times. Plus, she’d already agreed to see the kid anyway, so now would be a good time to make good on her promise to meet up with George in the ED and vent some of her frustrations to him.</p><p>She pulls out her phone to send him a text—wait.</p><p>
  <em>20 unread texts from Lydia?</em>
</p><p>Lizzie is dimly aware of her heart pounding in her throat as myriad horrible possibilities race through her mind. Did this have something to do with their mom’s repeated calls? Was there a horrible accident? Is Lydia injured? Broke? Arrested? Did something happen to their dad?</p><p>She’s about to call back while frantically trying to remember what the FM residency’s process is for taking emergency time off work (does she need to call Charlotte in as backup? Does she need to call her senior right now, even though he’s still upstairs dealing with a crashing patient?), when her phone vibrates twice in succession.</p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p><em>From: Darcy<br/></em> <strong>Haven’t seen you down here yet. Did you see the lead poisoning kid?</strong></p>
  <p>
    <em>From: Bing Lee</em>
    <br/>
    <strong>Hey Lizzie, hope your night’s going okay. There’s a patient down here in ED Rm 44 who’s asking to see you. Personal reasons, not work-related. It’s not an emergency, but she’s pretty adamant.</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>It’s not an emergency. <em>It’s not an emergency</em>. Okay. If Lydia’s in the ED asking to see her and she’s not seriously injured, then she can wait until Lizzie chews out Darcy first.</p><p>He picks up on the first ring. “Hey, I don’t mean to rush you, but I kind of need you to get this kid out of the ED. We’re kind of busy down here with a situa—”</p><p>“That’s nice. Did you call Poison Control before you paged for admission?”</p><p>“No. She has chronically elevated lead levels, so I figured Poison Control wouldn’t be able to help much.”</p><p>“…I guess that’s fair.” <em>Would have been nice if you included that in your note.</em></p><p>“So are you going to come down and see her?”</p><p>“Funny that you ask that. There’s a Peds consult note from Jane in the chart now. From the looks of it, you guys didn’t check an x-ray, or confirm the fingerstick level with an actual venous sample. Can you tell me exactly what kind of workup you’ve done so far?” <em>Or did you just decide to leave it to me to do all the research and work that’s your responsibility? I haven’t even seen the patient yet, and I’ve already done more work than you!</em></p><p>“You can check the chart for yourself to see what orders we’ve put in. There’s already an order for an x-ray and venous lead. Whether or not they’ve been carried out is out of my control<sup>3</sup>.”</p><p>“In that case, I’m going to wait for those results to come back before I consider admitting her. Especially since Jane’s note doesn’t actually say she should be admitted—”</p><p>“What Jane says doesn’t matter because she’s not an attending.”</p><p>“It’s attested! The attending already signed it and agreed with Jane’s plan—”</p><p>“No, I think you should admit her. This kid has a lead level of 45, which is high enough that she should be started on chelation therapy, and I just don’t think it’s appropriate to send her home when she’s at risk for developing neurotoxicity…”</p><p>She tries to interject, but he prattles on and on. It’s some kind of circular logic, an endless loop of “this patient needs inpatient care, because I believe it would be inappropriate to send her home, because she meets inpatient criteria…” It’s becoming more and more obvious with every word he says that he didn’t bother to look up the guidelines for when to start chelation therapy, and he’s completely unaware that there’s even a difference between a screening fingerstick lead and a diagnostic venous lead. And yet, he presses on, steamrolling her like he can bully her into admitting someone who absolutely does not need to be admitted. After all, what would a <em>family med</em> intern know, compared to an EM upper year? She’s no more than a glorified med student, after all.</p><p>It would be pathetic, if it weren’t so irritating. The hospital pays for point-of-care resources like UpToDate and DynaMed. The World Health Organization has published guidelines on treating lead poisoning, available for free. Hell, Google is free. And she knows he’s bullshitting because the blood work and imaging orders from the ED are time-stamped and were only placed two minutes ago.</p><p>Her cellphone vibrates against her face, and she pulls back to find a new unread text from Bing, followed by several from Lydia.</p><p>“…So anyway, I don’t think it would be right to send this kid home without treating her. You ought to do right by this patient and bring her in.”</p><p>
  <em>The absolute audacity of this self-righteous shitheel—</em>
</p><p>“Listen,” she cuts in, managing with moderate success to keep her tone civil. “My senior is nowhere to be found right now, and I’m having a family emergency that I need to deal with. I’m not admitting Lillian unless she actually needs IV chelation, and that’s final. If you want to go around me and convince my attending to take this soft admission<sup>4</sup>, be my guest. Otherwise, check the labs and imaging, start her on a bowel regimen or oral succimer—if it’s indicated—and make an appointment for her to follow up with her PCP’s office.”</p><hr/><p>Lizzie notices three things immediately upon arriving in the ED.</p><p>First, there’s a pair of EMTs standing near the main doors. Second, despite texting her two minutes ago that he’s brought coffee, George Wickham is not among the aforementioned EMTs waiting by the door. And third, her sister Lydia is standing with these (hopefully off-duty) guys, looking perfectly healthy and uninjured, flipping her hair and laughing at something that one of them just said.</p><p>One of the EMTs catches sight of her, and Lydia follows his line of sight.</p><p>“Lizzie! Oh thank fuck, you’re finally here!”</p><p>An elderly nurse sitting in the work station shoots Lydia a dirty look (and then another one at Lizzie), and it’s quite an impressive glare coming from someone who looks like she hasn’t smiled since the Eisenhower administration. Lizzie loves her sister—she really does—but despite her relief, at the moment she’s tempted to deny any association with this weird girl in her criminally tiny crop top who’s treating the Meryton Community Medical Center emergency department like her own personal nightclub for picking up EMTs.</p><p>“Lyds, what’s going on? I saw all your texts and thought someone was dying! And then Bing Lee texted me that—”</p><p>“Oh yeah, no one’s dying. If you ask me, it’s all horseshit. But someone <em>will</em> die if Mom keeps pulling this shit, and that someone is going to be me because I’d rather stick a fork in my brain than deal with this again.”</p><p>“Mom? <em>She’s</em> here, too? Does this have something to do with her calling me nonstop all night?”</p><p>“Lizzie. She called me and told me she was having chest pain that went down her left arm, and she needed to go to the hospital, and she needed me to drive her because ambulances are expensive, and she tried calling you but you—and I quote—‘don’t care if she lives or dies,’ so it has to be me.”</p><p>“Mom was having chest pain, and you’re out here flirting with the EMTs?”</p><p>“Didn’t you read my texts? She <em>faked a heart attack</em>. Jane’s been avoiding her calls because she didn’t want Mom grilling her about her new boyfriend, and somehow Mom decided the appropriate response would be to pretend she’s having chest pain and get brought to the hospital to meet him! If she’s going to interrupt me while I’m on a date so she can make me drive her to the hospital, then I’m going to have fun where I can.”</p><p>“You’re sure she’s not having a heart attack?” Lizzie chooses to ignore that last statement.</p><p>“Well, in my completely non-medical opinion, it’s a pretty dead giveaway when she point-blank admitted it to me as we were pulling into the hospital driveway. But she insisted on coming in to meet Bing since we had already made the drive here. And now she’s playing it up with the ER staff and won’t admit to lying, and none of them will believe me because they have to take chest pain seriously.”</p><p>“Did they do any tests?”</p><p>“Yeah, they said her heart chemicals or whatever came back normal, and her EKG was normal. I think they did an x-ray earlier, too. But Bing said they need to keep her here in the hospital overnight to keep checking the tests over the next 12 hours because they can change over time if you’re having a heart attack?”</p><p>“Sounds about right. And she’s okay with staying overnight even though she doesn’t need to? And paying for it? And getting stabbed with needles and woken up every few hours for labs and vitals checks?”</p><p>Lydia scoffs. “Please, do you think Mom thinks anything through? She just wants to stay here in the ER and bother Bing. She wouldn’t let them wheel her up to a proper hospital room, even though the ER staff explained that she’s taking up a spot in the ER that another patient could need. And when I said, ‘well, then let’s go home since you’re clearly feeling fine and don’t need to stay here,’ she started grabbing her chest and crying about how much it hurt. And then refused to take the aspirin when they tried to give it to her. Said she didn’t trust that it wasn’t going to have side effects.”</p><p>A new voice cuts into their conversation at this moment. “Wait, she refused to take the aspirin?”</p><p>And there he is. Dr. Bing Lee himself.</p><p>“Hi, Lizzie. Glad you got my text. Has Lydia filled you in on what’s going on?” He’s surprisingly calm and unperturbed about this whole thing. Or maybe it’s not that surprising that Jane would land herself the nicest, sweetest, most understanding boyfriend.</p><p>“Yeah.” Lizzie winces. “I’m so sorry. We had no idea she would try to pull something like this.”</p><p>“Oh, no, don’t worry about it! It’s not your fault. I’ve already talked about it with Jane, and I relayed Lydia’s concerns about secondary gain to my attending. At this point, Ms. Bennet is refusing treatment and further lab work, so there’s really no point in keeping her here in the ED.”</p><p>“That’s the thing, though!” Lydia bursts out. “She doesn’t want to go home, and she doesn’t want to get taken upstairs either. She just wants to stay here in the ER and bother you!”</p><p>“That’s okay. I was just coming over to talk to her anyway. I’ll make sure she understands the ramifications of deciding to leave AMA versus staying for ACS<sup>5</sup> rule-out.”</p><p>“Are you sure about this, Bing? We don’t want to her to impose on you more than she already has. You probably have a bunch of other patients to deal with down here. Here—why don’t you let me go in and deal with her?” As much as she loathes to, Lizzie figures it’s the least she can do.</p><p>“As the resident who’s responsible for her care, I’m pretty sure I have to be the one to discharge her,” Bing replies ruefully. “Besides, she’s not so bad. Just, ah, requires a lot of attention. And we’ll probably get along fine in small doses.”</p><p>“She’ll probably insist that Jane bring you over to her house for Thanksgiving dinner. The ordeal will be over a lot quicker if you just go along with it, even if you’re working that week. Lydia and I will come up with some kind of excuse to get you out of having to go.”</p><p>“I would much appreciate that,” Bing chuckles. “Or we could invite you and Lydia to join us. Well, wish me luck.”</p><p>Of course, the instant he knocks and disappears into the room, Fran Bennet’s voice can be heard gushing over him.</p><p>
  <em>“Oh, Dr. Lee! Thank goodness you’re back! Can I just say it’s so wonderful that my Jane has found herself such a charming young man? And so handsome and rich! I bet you could introduce my other daughters to your doctor friends…” </em>
</p><p>The one saving grace of the night is that the rest of the ED staff is avoiding Fran’s room and its vicinity like she has Ebola<sup>6</sup>, so everyone else is spared from her effusions.</p><p>Everyone else, that is, except the guy who’s currently clearing his throat beside Lizzie.</p><p>“Darcy,” she nods curtly.</p><p>“Lizzie,” he responds. His eyes flick disapprovingly toward Lydia’s outfit, then fix resolutely on Lizzie’s face. “The venous lead on that kid came back at 25, and the x-ray was clear. I’m going to discharge her home.”</p><p>
  <em>“…and you could introduce that unpleasant, sour-faced friend of yours to Lizzie! She’s not nearly as clever or pretty as Jane, so they would be well suited for each other! I still cannot believe how rude he was—that he would accuse me of…”</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Let’s just pretend that Lizzie, Jane, Bing, and Darcy are all working tonight because their schedules just turned out that way by complete coincidence. (In real life, it’s a lot harder to run into your friends while at work if they’re in a different specialty.)<br/>Footnotes:<br/>1. This is a major pet peeve of mine. The ED at my workplace acts like the moment they’ve called me about a patient, that patient is automatically my problem and they can wash their hands of it. In my experience, there have been two occasions where my team has evaluated the situation and decided a patient was stable enough to go home and not be admitted, but the ED provider had the audacity to say, “well, you’ve already come down to see them, so they’re technically already admitted now.” Which is. Not. True.<br/>2. Don’t worry about the medical stuff or the nuance between capillary and venous lead levels. These are all real guidelines that I looked up, and all you need to know is that Darcy is dead wrong about them, and it’s pissing Lizzie off.<br/>3. The ED isn't supposed to page for admission before a patient's tests come back, since that would mean they haven't finished their job yet.<br/>4. A soft admission is an admission where the patient probably could have gone home instead of getting hospitalized, but the admitting physician either was being extra-cautious and agreed it might be safer to admit and observe the patient, or didn’t feel like giving push-back to an EM physician who was really advocating for admission. Sometimes it ends up being warranted when further testing shows that the patient had something serious going on, and you end up eating your words. But other times the patient is fine and goes home the next day but has to pay for an overnight stay, so that just annoys the heck out of everyone.<br/>5. AMA = against medical advice. ACS = acute coronary syndrome<br/>6. Sorry, can’t make COVID references when COVID doesn’t exist in this AU.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In which Bing Lee ghosts.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lizzie’s two weeks on night float pass like a kidney stone, but eventually pass they do, and she escapes to the freedom (and free weekends!) of her newborn nursery rotation.</p><p>The babies are fragile and messy, but all they do is eat, sleep, poop, pee, and cry. And they usually don’t have a lot of complicated medical problems. Nursery certainly beats the stress of having to continually refresh the ED board and see what potential admission is brewing down there, while praying the ED would send them home. Plus, the hours are shorter, so she gets the last two weeks of November to de-stress and spend more time with Jane outside of work.</p><p>Come to think of it, she’s been hanging out with Jane one-on-one a lot more. It’s actually kind of weird to not constantly have Bing around as much—and when Bing isn’t around, neither is Darcy, so Bennet family dinners have become a quiet affair as of late.</p><p>The sudden absence of her sister’s beau turns out to be because he was assigned to an ICU rotation, where the patients are way sicker and the hours more grueling. From what Lizzie has gathered, Jane has been trying to keep in touch with him as best she can, but it’s difficult when he’s already at work before she wakes up and still working when she finishes her day.</p><p>Such is the price some people pay when they go through residency while in a relationship, Lizzie supposes. A lot of the upper year residents in family medicine are already married, and she often overhears them commiserating over how little they get to see their spouses and children when they’re on particularly rough rotations like inpatient and nights. Apparently, it’s especially difficult when their significant others also work, or are also in medicine, because there are times when they barely see each other over the course of a week due to their dyssynchronous work hours.</p><p>She figures that if she were dating George Wickham, it would probably be much the same way. With him working odd shifts as an EMT and her hours subject to change based on whatever rotation she’s assigned to, it’s doubtful that they would be able to see each other much, let alone plan a date ahead of time.</p><p>Then again, she wouldn’t know. She actually hasn’t even received so much as a text from Wickham since the incident with her mother in the ED. And his silence ever since, despite his promise to meet up with her to have coffee some time, was easily explained a few days later when she found a tagged photo of him shirtless, presumably taken in the bedroom of the girl (someone by the name of @missie_king on Instagram) who posted it, with the caption of a peach and eggplant emoji followed by a litany of suggestive tags.</p><p>So yeah, she had clearly misinterpreted whatever interactions she’d had with the guy.</p><p>It’s actually kind of depressing when she thinks about it. Just about every person in her life is with someone now, or at least getting some kind of action. Jane and Bing, Lydia and her dates, George and whoever that girl is he’s sleeping with, all her co-residents and their significant others. And it’s just Lizzie who’s perpetually single. (Except maybe Charlotte, but Charlotte doesn’t talk a lot about her personal life, so she could be secretly dating someone like Ricky Collins the hospital chaplain and Lizzie would be none the wiser.)</p><p>Is she just so surrounded by happy couples that she took a friendly gesture like a nice guy buying her a cup of coffee and leaped to thinking that he liked her? Sheesh. At least she didn’t embarrass herself by texting him anything excessively flirty.</p><p>Back to Jane and Bing, though.</p><p>As embarrassing as her mother’s antics had been, Bing had been a complete sweetheart about it. Up until the start of his ICU week, he still stopped by every day for dinner, and he and Jane were nauseatingly cute while they did the dishes together. He was even planning to come with the Bennet sisters to Fran’s for Thanksgiving, just so Jane wouldn’t have to endure their mother alone.</p><p>And so Jane and Lizzie wait for his ICU rotation to be over, so that weeknight dinners can go back to normal.</p><p>Only…</p><p>A week passes.</p><p>Followed by another.</p><p>And Bing doesn’t stop by.</p><p>If he gave a reason for avoiding them, Lizzie has yet to hear it. And if Jane knows his reasons, she’s just as tight-lipped.</p><p>And then Lizzie starts worrying that maybe they should have read more into the fact that Bing had gone from promptly answering Jane’s texts to replying with emojis, to then leaving her on “read” over the course of a few days. Maybe there was something more going on than Bing just being too tired to talk, or starting another rotation that was out of sync with Jane’s schedule, or being on an outside rotation at another hospital (thought that would be kind of unusual for first-year residents). She’s almost tempted to ask Darcy what’s going on, but being on her nursery rotation, she has no reason to go down to the emergency department and certainly isn’t about to go out of her way to seek him out.</p><p>(Come to think of it, it <em>is</em> a little weird that she’s suddenly stopped running into him around the hospital, too.)</p><hr/><p>Ever since the divorce, Thanksgivings in the Bennet family have been a split affair. The daughters often spent Thursday with their father, and then their mother would cart Jane and Lydia off to go Black Friday shopping for the weekend, while Lizzie usually bowed out with the excuse of being too busy.</p><p>This year, she’s dragged along for the ride, since she couldn’t well leave Jane to endure Fran Bennet’s hounding when her sister was feeling the absence of Bing Lee so acutely.</p><p>Four years as a divorcee have made Fran incorrigible as ever. She dominates the dinner conversation—whining first about how Mrs. Long from the PTA ignored her when they met up by chance at Whole Foods last week, and then about how Harry and Meghan are “tearing the royal family apart,” and then about how Mrs. So-and-So’s daughter just got engaged to some “fancy doctor-type guy” with a six-figure salary. That last point then transitions to Fran peppering Jane with questions as to which fancy restaurants Bing has taken her out to, how much money he’s going to make once he finishes residency, whether or not he’ll propose soon, whether they’ve made any plans to move in together, and— “Where is that charming young man anyway? I thought he promised to have a family dinner with us!”</p><p>Jane quietly responds that he’d texted her this morning to say that something came up and he couldn’t make it.</p><p>Fran simply scoffs and launches into a lecture about how it’s the <em>twenty-first century</em>, and women need to <em>put out</em> in order to <em>secure a man, </em>and speaking of which<em>—Lydia! Remind me to take you girls to Victoria’s Secret tomorrow, so Jane can get something other than those awful granny-panties. She needs to put herself out there more, or Dr. Lee will slip through her fingers.</em></p><p>Lizzie bites her tongue and wisely decides not to mention that <em>Sorry, something came up and I can’t make </em>it was the first text Jane had received from Bing in an entire week, despite her attempting to reach him nearly every day to make sure he was okay.</p><p>After finishing off Jane, Fran turns to her next-favorite daughter. “Lyddie! How are things going with that nice young man you met at the hospital? What was his name—Gerald? Gregory? You’ve been on what? Two dates now?”</p><p>Across the table, Lydia simply takes another bite of mashed potatoes and stonily ignores her mother, clearly still incensed about the crap she pulled in the ED several weeks ago.</p><p>Fran is determined to not be deterred by her daughters’ silence, though, and instead focuses on the third. “Elizabeth, how kind of you to grace us with your presence this year! It’s interesting how the one year you weren’t too busy to come happens to be the year you’re working your heinie off in residency.”</p><p>“Yes. Well.” Lizzie smiles as sweetly as she can manage without gagging. “I heard about your heart attack and had to come and make sure you were doing well. I hope our estimable Dr. Bing Lee did his due diligence and started you on aspirin, Plavix, Lipitor, a beta blocker, and an ACE inhibitor. Would you like for me to make a run to CVS and pick up your refills?”</p><p>If her father were present, he would probably be smirking at how the implications of Lizzie’s retort go right over Fran’s head. But Fran simply brushes it off, muttering something about how youngsters go to medical school and now they think they know everything, before pivoting back to her preferred topic of conversation. “Say, I don’t suppose you have any news to share about any young men in <em>your</em> life, Elizabeth?”</p><p>“Nope.” Like hell she’s going to tell Fran Bennet about the EMT whose open friendliness she misinterpreted as romantic interest.</p><p>“What about that tall fellow from the ER—Bing Lee’s friend? Dr. Darcy, I think he was called. Jane tells me you four spend a lot of time together. He’s decent-looking, and I hear he’s rich, though I wouldn’t have guessed it based on his manners.”</p><p>“He’s only around us because he follows Bing everywhere. He said so himself that I wasn’t pretty or smart enough for him. You of all people would understand that, Mother.”</p><p>“Hmph. Well, then I guess we can both agree that he is obnoxious, boring, stuffy, and unbelievably rude. You keep an eye on that one, Elizabeth. I wouldn’t put it past him to think Jane’s not good enough for Dr. Lee and try to break them up!”</p><p>At this, Jane nearly drops her fork in alarm, and Lizzie has to school her own features into blank passivity. There’s no way their mother could have known about Bing ghosting. None of them would have told her, given her notorious propensity towards histrionics, and it’s not like Fran Bennet is the type of person who would be perceptive enough to figure it out.</p><p>Fran, fortunately, seems eager to move on to a new topic of discussion and soon forgets all about Jane’s absent suitor, and all three of her daughters are soon unburdened from having to participate in the dinner table conversation.</p><p><em>Still</em>, Lizzie muses later as all four Bennet women cram into her car and brace themselves for a trip to the mall with their shopaholic mother. It <em>is</em> an uncomfortable thought. The idea that Bing may have been influenced by Darcy to put some distance between Jane and himself had not even occurred to Lizzie until Fran brought up the possibility.</p><p>Surely Darcy isn’t so irredeemable as to deliberately engineer their separation and break her sister’s heart, right? Her mother was just being paranoid and irrational when she made that passing remark, right?</p><p>But then again, her mother was also the woman who faked a heart attack in order to go to the ED and meet her daughter’s new boyfriend. Convoluted plots are kind of her specialty. Like that time when they were in high school and she dragged them to the supermarket at 4 a.m. to buy the on-sale canned green beans and cranberry juice, and then had Jane carry a green bean/cranberry gelatin monstrosity (while wearing a white dress, in the rain!) to meet some new neighbors, in the hopes that the casserole would melt and ruin Jane’s dress and the rich new neighbors would invite her in and launder said dress for her.</p><p>Jane may be the sweetest, kindest soul in the world, but both Darcy and Bing had a front row seat to her mother’s outrageous display in the ED. For a snob like William Darcy, it would be a no-brainer to cut off all potential ties to a girl whose only crime was to be related to Fran Bennet—or in this case, poison your best friend’s opinion of his girlfriend. And Darcy <em>is</em> the guy who ruined George Wickham’s dreams of becoming an orthopedic surgeon. It wouldn’t be too off-brand for him to engineer their separation.</p><p>There’s something rotten in the state of Jane and Bing, and her mother just may have inadvertently been both the person responsible for it and the one to suss it out.</p><p>Kind of appropriate, then, that this realization comes to Lizzie while on a mother-and-estranged-middle-daughter-and-semi-estranged-eldest-and-youngest-daughters shopping trip.</p><p>The whole situation is just uncomfortable all around.</p><hr/><p>A few weekends later, Lizzie arrives home from a run to find her nostrils assaulted by the scent of way too much cinnamon and vanilla. The kitchen and entryway are almost unbearable warm, and the whole apartment smells like Christmas threw up in it.</p><p>She finds Jane stirring something at the counter, humming something that Lizzie can’t make out over the roar of the hand mixer. Her sister turns around only long enough to nod at the kitchen table and invite her to have a cookie or twenty and then resumes baking.</p><p>Evidently, the snickerdoodles will have to be the only food Lizzie gets for a while because the kitchen sink is piled high with dirty bowls and various baking equipment. Jane must have used up every single mixing bowl they own, along with all the large pots and other containers meant to be a receptacle for food that could substitute for a mixing bowl.</p><p>Apparently, she had been “feeling the Christmas spirit” and decided to bake a batch of snickerdoodles but read the instructions wrong and added way too much vanilla, and of course the only logical next step was to add a proportionate amount of way too much of all the other ingredients and make a mega-batch instead.</p><p>It’s a convincing story—if one didn’t know that, as the best baker in the Bennet family, Jane Bennet would never make a silly mistake like misreading “2 tsp” as “2 Tbsp.” Lizzie raises a skeptical eyebrow, first at the bowl of wet ingredients, then at the teaspoon of vanilla that Jane is about to add to her allegedly over-vanilla’ed batter.</p><p>Jane cracks. Admits that she told their mother about how Bing has been avoiding her, after Fran kept calling and asking to see him again. After Fran’s tears had subsided, she’d insisted that Jane speak with her program coordinator about possibly moving her emergency medicine rotation up sooner, in the hopes that her physical proximity to Bing’s primary place of work would bring them into contact. So Jane had asked around her class and was able to switch rotations with one of the other pediatrics interns, and her program approved the swap, so she’s scheduled to start in the ED next week.</p><p>Well, the stress of it got to her once that decision was handed down, so she baked a batch of snickerdoodles to calm her nerves this morning. Then decided she should bring them to Bing’s apartment as a peace offering and (hopefully) to talk to him. (After all, Jane Bennet wouldn’t just show up at someone's workplace without giving advance notice, especially when she isn’t sure Bing even wants to see her.)</p><p>Except Bing didn’t answer the door when Jane knocked. She’d noticed on Instagram that Caroline Lee had announced that she was in town again, so she texted her to at least confirm that Bing was last seen less than 24 hours ago and not dead or incapacitated on his apartment floor.</p><p>Caroline confirmed that Bing was fine, they were just out at the mall together and weren’t expected to be back for a while, but she’d let Bing know that Jane was looking for him.</p><p>Jane thanked her and asked what time he was expecting to be home.</p><p>Caroline left her on “read.”</p><p>So Jane went home and continued stress-baking. Hence their apartment smelling like a cinnamon bomb went off.</p><p>That’s Saturday.</p><p>On Sunday, Jane finally stops baking because they run out of flour.</p><p>Instead, she tries to distract herself by scrolling through social media. She responds to some of the comments on the Instagram photos of her snickerdoodles, likes a couple of her old classmates’ vacation pictures, and gingerly scrolls past Fran Bennet’s Facebook posts about some herbal supplement that she’s pretty sure is a pyramid scheme.</p><p>Then she sees that Caroline apparently posted a new photo to her Facebook a few hours ago.</p><p>It’s a picture of Bing at a bar, with his arm around a pretty brunette.</p><p>The photo isn’t tagged, but it appears to have been taken around Thanksgiving. Caroline had captioned it, “Dr. Lee’s first trip home for Thanksgiving since college and look who we ran into! #highschoolsweethearts #soadorable #loveprevails”</p><p>Lizzie doesn’t see Jane leave her room for the rest of Sunday.</p><p>On Monday, Jane starts her emergency medicine rotation. Unfortunately, they stick her in the corner of the ED where all the pediatric patients are, so she doesn’t get to see Bing at all.</p><p>Lizzie is fully prepared to break out the romcoms and ice cream and let Jane cry out her frustrations after work, but Jane surprises her with an elaborately embroidered “L” for her to hang up on her wall. She’d spent all day Sunday making it—that’s why she didn’t leave her room, of course.</p><p>When Lizzie tries to ask Jane how she’s <em>really </em>feeling, Jane offers her a cup of tea, then asks to hear all about Lizzie’s day, then offers her another cup of tea, then offers to do her laundry, then brings her yet another cup of tea. After all, why would she be upset? It’s a beautiful day outside, she has a great job, she’s alive, Lizzie’s alive, their whole family is alive, there are sick kids in the hospital and she’s not one of them, everything’s…grand.</p><p>With Jane stonewalling her, Lizzie decides to take matters into her own hands on Tuesday.</p><p> </p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <strong>Hey Bing it’s been a while<br/>Want to hang out this weekend?<br/>We have a fridge full of snickerdoodles</strong>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>She doesn’t expect an answer, but she figures it would be better to go directly to Bing than to take her chances with his sister or best friend.</p><p>Amazingly, the guy who has been dodging his (ex?) girlfriend’s texts and calls for a full month does not have the same aversion to responding once her sister gets involved. Jane bursts out of her room scarcely two minutes after Lizzie sends that text, practically shoving her phone in Lizzie’s face.</p><p>“Lizzie, read this. What kind of excuse is this? ‘<em>Sorry I’ve been quiet lately, too busy studying for Step 3. Hope you and your family have a merry Christmas</em>.’”</p><p>Well, that’s a clear enough dismissal. From the man himself, too.</p><p>“It’s over, isn’t it, Lizzie? He knew where to find me, but he didn’t reach out. And when he finally does, this is the best he can come up with? He just waited for weeks to say anything. He didn’t call, or text…and I didn’t know what he was thinking, and I don’t know what I did…and I don’t know…why he won’t just have just a-an actual conversation with me…”</p><p>Jane starts to cry, and Lizzie’s of a mind to pummel Bing the next time she sees him.</p><p>It’s not that big of a hospital. He can’t hide from her forever.</p><p>Caroline hadn’t tagged him or his mysterious high school sweetheart in her Facebook photo, but Lizzie would have to be blind not to notice her dark hair, nose, and cheekbones that looked eerily similar to Will Darcy’s.</p><p>Did he and Caroline orchestrate this together? It’s not lost on Lizzie that the photo was posted untagged, and only to Caroline’s Facebook, instead of to platforms where the average user base isn’t pushing retirement age. Maybe Bing isn’t actually involved with Darcy’s (presumed) sister, and the photo was just meant to get Jane to back off. But what could they have told Bing to make him dump Jane without even so much as a breakup <em>text</em>? And what possessed Bing to take them at their word and not even confirm the facts of whatever horrible rumor they must have fed him about Jane? And does it even matter if the photo was staged, or posted with a misleading caption, if Bing himself seems to want nothing to do with her?</p><p>No, Jane is right. He knew where to find her at any time. But he made her endure the agony of a slowly breaking heart and had nothing but flimsy excuses when he finally reemerged.</p><p>So yeah.</p><p>To hell with Caroline and Darcy. And to hell with Bing Lee.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sorry this took forever to get out. I’ve been hitting a rut lately. Work has calmed down a bit (for now), but I’m just not feeling as inspired to write. I’m not great at “lull” or “filler” chapters, and that’s what this chapter is because I didn’t work a Mr. Collins subplot into this fic.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Elizabeth's trip to Kent.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Back when Lizzie first started residency, time had crawled by, the three years of training ahead of her stretching seemingly into oblivion. She had been so busy trying to translate the medical knowledge she learned in school into real-world medical decisions and patient care, and learning the electronic medical record, and generally trying not to fuck up. Everything felt new, and terrifying, and needed to be done in a specific way, and she took great pains to check and recheck her work, and every hour she spent at work felt like five.</p><p>Now that she’s about halfway into intern year (and one-sixth of the way through residency!), she can’t help but envy that bright-eyed, bushy-tailed baby intern whose only concerns were finishing her notes on time and trying not to look like an idiot in front of her attendings.</p><p>The medical knowledge she’s accumulated so far has been invaluable, and she can’t even remember the last time she felt the need to consult with her senior residents whenever a nurse paged her for a Tylenol order. But on the flip side, she’s been a resident long enough that the shiny newness of it all has long since lost its appeal. Now the rotations just come and go, one after another, and at no point can she be bothered to recall what she had been doing just two weeks prior.</p><p>Then again it’s kind of difficult to focus solely on work when she comes home every day to a sister who’s still hurting.</p><p>In the days after Bing sent that final text, Lizzie watches Jane resume her usual routine, seemingly determined to remain unaffected. She goes to work, brings in baked goods for the entire pediatrics residency class, volunteers for some community outreach clinics, offers to do Lizzie’s laundry, learns to crochet. The supply of snickerdoodles in their fridge shrinks in proportion to the growing mountain of festive baby hats that Jane plans to bring in when she’s covering the newborn nursery over Christmas.</p><p>She never once runs into Bing during the two weeks she’s rotating in the ED. Lizzie suspects he either rearranged his schedule to avoid Jane or has a light elective rotation that he’s using to study for Step 3.</p><p>To the outside observer, Jane seems…<em>subdued</em>, was what their father had called it when he dropped by during a rare weekend when both sisters had a day off. Jane had greeted him with a tired smile and barely spoke a word while he and Lizzie dominated the lunchtime conversation.</p><p>Lizzie had doubted he even had a clue what was going on—at least until he made that offhand remark about how it’ll do Jane some good to be “crossed in love.” And how, at the age of 27, it’s about time one of Jane’s young men broke up with her instead of vice versa, and you wouldn’t want to be outdone by Jane for long, would you Lizzie?</p><p>Maybe he and their mother spoke more often than Lizzie had given them credit for.</p><p>The callousness of his words in the face of her sister’s heartbreak threw her a bit, before she remembered that her parents were divorced for a reason.</p><p>In all fairness to her dad, he doesn’t know that Jane has dragged her mattress into Lizzie’s room and taken to sleeping there at night. Ostensibly it was because she missed the sleepovers they used to have as little girls. But if Lizzie wakes up to quiet sniffling in the middle of the night and notices her sister’s form wracked with silent sobs across the room, neither she nor Jane mentions it.</p><p>Is this to be the fate of the Bennet sisters? With a scheming, opportunistic mother willing to throw her daughters in any number of situations in order to marry them off, and a sarcastic, unsympathetic father who makes sport of her melodramatics, is it any wonder that their daughters turned out the way they have?</p><p>Jane: the one who recognized her parents’ faults at an early age and decided that if the world was going to suck, then she was going to make it <em>suck</em> <em>less</em>. Who grew up volunteering in soup kitchens and animal shelters. Who, before Bing, shielded her heart and dated a series of nice, pleasant, interchangeable men with whom she got nowhere and parted amicably.</p><p>Lydia: the one whose love life now consists of brief flings and nameless one-night stands because her emotional capacity for serious relationships was stunted at the age of 16, thanks to the front row seat she had to the complete disintegration of her parents’ train wreck of a marriage.</p><p>And Lizzie: the perpetually single one who became their father’s favorite, if only for the distinct <em>lack</em> of material in her personal life to supply him for teasing.</p><hr/><p>During the last two weeks of December, both Jane and Lizzie are scheduled to work the week of Christmas in exchange for New Year’s off. Jane gets assigned to cover the newborn nursery and put her adorable crocheted hats on the lucky babies who are born during the holidays.  Lizzie, curse her luck, is stuck with the family medicine inpatient service.</p><p><em>Ah yes, the joy of admitting all the CHF<sup>1</sup> patients who come in with acute exacerbation because they thought eating whatever they want doesn’t count as cheating on their diet if it’s during a holiday…</em> (Bonus points if they’re crabby and snappy with the residents, as if it’s the poor intern’s fault they have to stay in the hospital during Christmas <em>while their heart is acutely failing</em>.)</p><p>At this point, she’s pretty sure she’s lost count of how many weeks she’s spent cumulatively on inpatient and nights. Probably enough that she could become a hospitalist or nocturnist after residency. Not that she plans to have anything to do with inpatient medicine once she’s out of this hellhole for good.</p><p>On Tuesday of her holiday coverage week, her attending calls her into her office before rounds. Considering that Dr. Margaret Lambert-Gardiner is a very knowledgeable, well-spoken, and approachable program director who’s never had any issues with her before, Lizzie is a little nonplussed as to the intention of this meeting.</p><p>Well, it turns out “an unnamed emergency med resident” had complained about her regarding an incident last month. Something about Lizzie giving pushback over admitting a kid with elevated lead levels and being dismissive of the resident’s concerns. She’s not in trouble, but Dr. Gardiner wants to know what happened, since the complaint had been made to the EM program director who happens to be <em>Mr. </em>Dr. Gardiner.</p><p>It also looks especially bad because said EM resident had noted that “family medicine agrees with admission” in the medical record, but the kid ended up never being admitted.</p><p>She doesn’t need three guesses to figure out the unnamed resident’s identity. To get her in trouble with her program director is entirely too on-brand for him.</p><p>Fortunately the facts of the case are on her side, so she recounts them to Dr. Gardiner: Darcy had wanted her to admit an asymptomatic kid with an elevated fingerstick lead, without doing any of the workup. She showed him the guidelines, and he ignored her and kept talking over her. She put her foot down and refused to consider admitting the kid until he got a blood lead level. The venous lead turned out to be below threshold, so he discharged the kid home.</p><p>And then, because her rage is starting to boil over—first from the indignity of essentially being tattled on by <em>that asshole</em>, and then by having to relive the Lillian Netherfield incident and the night Fran Bennet thoroughly embarrassed her in the ED—she tells Dr. Gardiner about her history with Darcy. How he was well-known to her outside of work since they were frequently thrown together due to their social circles overlapping. How he habitually made disparaging comments about her place of education, her type of medical degree, and her choice of specialty. How he had previously ruined the prospects of an orthopedics resident at Ramsgate over a petty personal vendetta. And if he was offended by her insubordination toward him, he should have talked to her about it instead of thinking he could order her around—and then going behind her back to the person who was actually the boss of her.</p><p>Dr. Gardiner listens to all this, then says quietly, “Thank you, Lizzie. I’ll be meeting with the EM program directors later this week, so I’ll relay your information to them. In the future, if any of your colleagues give you a hard time, I expect that you handle it as professionally as you did this case. If you feel like a complaint needs to be made to their program director, I am always here to listen.”</p><p>Her words are reassuring, but Lizzie, in her paranoia, can only hear, <em>If you lied to me, I’ll find out. If you’re rude or unprofessional to the EM residents again, I’ll find out. Don’t disappoint me again.</em></p><p>So she goes through the motions, sees her patients, rounds with her attendings, writes her notes, puts in orders, calls the specialists. Admits the frequent fliers.</p><p>Keeps her head down.</p><p>Darcy, at the very least, seems to be making himself scarce. That, or he chose to work the week of New Year’s instead.</p><p>Good. Maybe he does have <em>some</em> degree of self-preservation instinct.</p><hr/><p>January rolls around, and Lizzie starts orthopedics.</p><p>The ortho rotation is a little less structured than some of her other rotations. Most of the time, there’s not a lot for her to do except cling to a resident and follow them everywhere. If she’s lucky, they let her hang out with them in the operating room and she might get to close the skin at the end of a surgery. In a lot of ways, she feels like a med student again.</p><p>It’s fair, she supposes. She’s never going be using any of this in her future practice, so she’s basically a guest to the ortho residents.</p><p>And it’s not that bad. There’s a lot of hip and knee replacements, so she gets to see what really bad osteoarthritis looks like and learn when to refer patients to ortho for it. Also a lot of sprains and strains, so she gets to practice the musculoskeletal exam. Plus, because she’s not essential, they let her out early most days. Charlotte is on her EM rotation this block, so she and Lizzie have met up several times for drinks after her shift.</p><p>The ortho chief resident is a guy named Fitz Williams. He’s easy-going, laid-back, loves talking about sports, will randomly challenge the other residents to push-up contests in the middle of morning lecture—basically the textbook definition of an ortho bro, but he’s easy to talk to and calls her “Lizzie B” and doesn’t mind her shadowing him around.</p><p>She runs into Darcy and Charlotte down in the ED a few times, when she and Fitz are doing admissions.</p><p>The first time, Darcy had spotted her and said hello. She’d nodded curtly and looked away. The four of them stood around awkwardly for a few tense seconds before Lizzie ventured to ask, “My sister was rotating in the ED a few weeks ago. You wouldn’t happen to have run into her down here, would you?”</p><p>“No,” he’d replied immediately.</p><p>Maybe a little too quickly.</p><p>But before she could read more into it, Fitz stepped in and greeted Darcy like an old friend, clapping him on the back and loudly asking how his sister was doing, which actually drew a smile from the Darcy-bot.</p><p>(Apparently they went to med school together, when Fitz was a fourth-year and Darcy was a first-year<sup>2</sup>. Go figure. Is there anyone in this hospital that Darcy is friends with who <em>didn’t</em> go to Cornell? Scratch that—are there any perfectly nice, lively, outgoing people who <em>aren’t </em>inexplicably close friends with Darcy?)</p><p>She drops by the EM residents’ work room a few times to talk to Charlotte. Mostly about Anne Debourgh, who has presented to the ED for asthma exacerbations at least three times in the past week. Lizzie figures that, as Anne’s outpatient PCP, it would be easier for her to keep in the loop with all her ED trips if she gets her updates from Charlotte, who actually evaluated Anne in the ED, rather than wait for the note to be sent to her notification box.</p><p>Although, knowing Anne, she’s probably going to need inpatient admission sooner than later.</p><p>Lizzie feels Darcy’s gaze on her on more than one occasion. Probably staring in disapproval at her and Charlotte and making mental notes to complain to Dr. Lambert-Gardiner about how her interns are socializing when they should be working. As if he and Fitz don’t chat for social reasons way more often. At least the conversations she has with Charlotte are actually work-related.</p><hr/><p>She doesn’t know which genius had the brilliant idea to put Anne in the patient room directly across from the EM residents’ work room today, but that person has earned a spot at the top of Lizzie’s shit list.</p><p>“<em>Dr. Bennet!”</em></p><p>She’s on her way back from seeing a new admission—some guy with a fractured tibia after a motor vehicle accident—when Catherine Debourgh sticks her head out and tries to grab Lizzie as she passes by Anne’s room. “<em>Finally!</em> I’ve been waiting for someone to check on my daughter for ten minutes!”</p><p>One would think that, for someone whose daughter practically lives in the emergency room, the woman would have figured out by now that that’s not how hospitals work. 1) Don’t touch people without their permission. 2) Anne gets an hour-long nebulizer treatment, and<em> then</em> gets checked. And 3) the provider checking on her should be the one who’s <em>actually</em> responsible for her care while she’s in this department.</p><p>A few workstations over, Charlotte catches Lizzie’s <em>help me</em> eyes and groans, grabbing her stethoscope. “Let’s go, Will. We’re being summoned by Lady Catherine.”</p><p>As they scurry off to deal with Catherine Debourgh (<em>again</em>), Fitz Williams slides into the seat next to Lizzie. “Hey, what’d I miss?”</p><p>She rolls her eyes. “Just the worst asthma kid on my panel and her even worse mom harassing me while I’m trying to write an H&amp;P<sup>3</sup> for our tibial fracture guy. Our EM friends have gone to deal with Momzilla, but don’t be surprised if she barges out again and physically drags me to their room.”</p><p>“That bad?”</p><p>“She’s, uh, very needy. And unfortunately, she latches onto me because I’m the kid’s PCP.”</p><p>“Then I guess we better finish up and get out of here while Darce keeps her distracted. I’ll throw in some quick admission orders. You go ahead and finish your note.”</p><p>They work together in companionable silence for a few minutes. Lizzie is typing out her plan of care when she senses someone standing at her elbow.</p><p>It’s tall and unnervingly quiet, starts with a D, and ends with an -arcy.</p><p>“Are you trying to distract me so I mess up my note? Lurking there and watching me type? Or are you trying to give me a heart attack?”</p><p>He seems startled to have been addressed but recovers quickly enough. “Oh no, not at all. I think I’ve known you long enough to know that you don’t scare easily. But we’ve managed to keep Mrs. Debourgh placated for now. How are you, Lizzie?”</p><p>“I was doing better before you showed up.”</p><p>“Very funny, but I can tell when you’re teasing.”</p><p>“Hah. So the robot <em>can</em> joke.”</p><p>Fitz watches this exchange with amusement. “You know, Darce never told me where he knew you from.”</p><p>“Well, he has this friend—”</p><p>“We met at the new intern welcome luncheon.”</p><p>“Where he lurked at the edges and barely talked to anyone outside of EM.”</p><p>“It was crowded and I barely knew anyone.”</p><p>“What, like you can’t be introduced to anyone at an orientation picnic?”</p><p>(“Yeah, Darce,” Fitz interjects, “weren’t you supposed to be there to welcome the new interns?”)</p><p>“That’s a fair point,” Darcy acknowledges. “But I was never blessed with the talent of making small talk with people I’ve never met before.”</p><p>“Wait, but then how do you take care of patients? How do you build rapport with them? Do you have no bedside manner?”</p><p>(“All great questions, Lizzie B! The answer is, he doesn’t! My boy’s got the social skills of an agoraphobic lobster. He just goes in, gets his information, and gets out.”)</p><p>“So he just straight-up volunteered to orient the interns knowing he doesn’t do well with strangers?”</p><p>“Hey, don’t talk about me like I can’t hear you. I’m still standing here!”</p><p>“And we’re still trying to do an admission. If you have nothing better to do, Darcy, maybe you ought to go practice socializing.”</p><p>She half-expects him to be offended by her sass, but he actually cracks a smile.</p><p>Unfortunately, whatever reply he has in mind has to wait, as Catherine Debourgh’s voice screeches from across the hall, “<em>Doctor! Where is Dr. Darcy? I thought he was going to come back to discuss Anne’s eucalyptus essential oils!”</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Footnotes:<br/>1. CHF = congestive heart failure, aka a condition where your heart doesn’t pump blood as well as a healthy person’s. So if you cheat on your diet and eat a bunch of salt or don’t take your meds, your body holds on to more excess fluid, which overwhelms your shitty cardiovascular system, and then the blood builds up and fluid-overloads the rest of your body, and you come in unable to breathe because your lungs are full of fluid.<br/>2. Timeline clarification: Ortho residency is 5 years long. Fitz is currently a PGY-5 and Darcy is a PGY-2, so they met when Fitz was a fourth-year medical student at Cornell and Darcy was a first-year. <br/>3. H&amp;P (“H and P”) = history and physical. Basically your admission note, documenting the story your patient tells you, your physical exam findings, any relevant labs/imaging, and your assessment and treatment plan.</p><p>Next chapter: the disastrous proposal</p>
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